[Illustration: PLATE VII.--_Lower part of enriched Chanfron. Suit presented to Charles I. by the City of London. Tower of London._] The most magnificent targets were made solely for parade, and were borne in front of princely personages by their esquires. The broad surfaces they presented for decoration, and the esteem they were held in, induced even very great artists, like Giulio Romano, not only to design them, but actually to work upon them. It is far from rare to find in collections of drawings by old masters, designs for shields, like those signed Polydore and B. Franco hanging in the corridors at Chatsworth. Under the Tudor and later Valois kings they were usually round and of steel, but sometimes elliptical, obovate, vesica-shaped, rectangular, and even heater-shaped, with painted arms. One of the finest ever produced is the Milanese buckler at Windsor, believed to have been in England since the time of Francis I. The repoussé work is of most exquisite finish and the gold damascening of extraordinary delicacy. Others not inferior to it are at Dresden, Turin, and Madrid, the latter by Colman of Augsburg. The shield of Charles IX. in the Louvre is also superbly damascened. Magnificent specimens are known from the hands of the Negrolis and Picinino of Milan, Gasparo Mola of Florence, Giorgio Ghisi of Mantua. A description of one, now lost, by Hieronymus Spacini of Milan, states that it comprised forty-eight engravings in gold upon niello. Hans Mielich has left several designs, some of which were carried out by Colman. The finely-embossed target in the Kensington Museum is signed by Georgius Sigman of Augsburg. The Bernal, Meyrick, Soltykoff, and other collections now dispersed, included examples illustrating the story of Coriolanus, Siege of Troy, Judgment of Paris, etc. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--_Target of Etched Steel. Italian or German, about 1550. Mr. P. Davidson's Collection._]