Armour reached its highest point of development at a time when it had become at least highly probable that the use of fire-arms would drive it altogether from the field. Yet the armour-smith’s craft, so far from languishing, seemed to renew its youth, and flourished exceedingly in the early sixteenth century. That was an age of mighty Kings--of Maximilian and Charles V. of Germany, of Henry VIII. of England, of Francis I. of France, and of Ferdinand of Aragon--Sovereigns who loved “the pomp and panoply of glorious war,” and who were keenly alive to the potentialities of the knightly harness as a medium for display and ostentation. This, too, was the age of the Renaissance, when the setting of a gem or the moulding of a goblet was a matter that would occupy a grave potentate to the exclusion of affairs of state. The armourer’s art came in for a large share of the interest taken in all the applied arts. But as in the latter half of the fifteenth century, armour had already arrived at a purity of line and adaptability to its purpose which could not be improved upon, the energies of the Renaissance artists were perforce expended upon ornamentation and enrichment. This tendency was naturally the more freely indulged as the inefficiency of armour as a defence for life and limb became more generally recognized. The “Maximilian” style of armour, which superseded the “Gothic” or late fifteenth century style, seems to have originated at Milan, probably in the workshop of the Negrolis of Missaglia. It was modelled on--or suggested by--the civil costume of the time, and derives its name from the approval it received from the Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519). That monarch was distinguished above all the princes of his age for his fondness for warlike exercises, and for his skill and courage in the lists. The armour named after him is fluted, and is usually characterised by heavy-shoulder defences, and skirts of plate or lamboys. The earliest pieces introduced into Spain by the Emperor’s son, Philip I., do not belong to this style; nor does the handsome suit (A16--plate 15), believed to be of Spanish make, and worn by the Prince, possibly at the tilt organised in his honour in the Zocodover in 1502. Of the heavy tilting heaulme forming part of the harness, the Conde de Valencia says: “This handsome helm, to judge by the dimensions of the shutter, might be thought either Spanish or Italian; but in forming a definite opinion it must be remembered that it is marked with a _fleur-de-lys_, very similar to that of a _Chapeau de Montauban_, which we have seen in the Hefner collection at Munich.”