Heraldry as art: An account of its development and practice, chiefly in England

by G. W. Eve

Fig. 19.—Florentine Decoration Shield.
Fourteenth Century.

Fig. 18, a kite-shaped shield of the fourteenth century, bears bendwise the word Libertas, the motto of the republic of the town of Luroques, in beautiful letters, whose treatment is perfectly appropriate to the gesso in which they are executed. The shape of the shield follows closely one of the early Norman forms, and is somewhat of the same proportion, being 44 inches high by 21 inches broad. The square pavoise (Fig. 19) of wood covered with vellum is painted with the arms of the Buonamici, and over them as crest is the portrait of the head of that family, Bienheureux Buonamici.

At the time that the use of shields in actual combat was becoming less and less frequent, the invention of engraving on metal plates, the improvement in wood-engraving, and finally the production of printed books, opened a fresh field for heraldic art in the making of the plates of arms which marked the patronage of a literary work, or in the more familiar bookplate which signified the ownership of the book. Then began that long series of beautiful little works by Martin Schongauer, Israel van Meckenen, and by Dürer and their successors. In the large number of designs thus produced the shields, in many instances, became much less simple, ceasing to be a representation of the real defence, though some of them were developments from it. The cusped forms such as Figs. 20 and 21, which came into use in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and became still more frequent in the Tudor period, perhaps have some affinity with the elaborate fluted armour of the time, but others were frank adaptations of the contemporary decorative scrolls and were really cartouches more or less in place of a shield.

Fig. 20.—Fifteenth Century.

Fig. 21.—Sixteenth Century.

The special tournament shield, the shield à bouche, had a marked influence on subsequent forms. In order that the shield might, during the joust, fit closely to the shaft of the lance a semi-circular opening was made, sometimes at the top but more usually at the side, as in the example (Fig. 22), and from this simple expedient a very great variety of shape resulted, of which the manner of evolution is interesting.

In the ornamental forms that were based on the actual ones this embouchure was sometimes plainly indicated, as in the shield from the group of Dürer’s coat of arms (Fig. 23) and in the French wood-carving (Fig. 24); in others the lower point of the opening was merged into one swinging line, as in the shield of the well-known Death’s Head coat of arms. The next step was to duplicate the curve suggested by the bouche, and from the resulting form proceeded an endless variety of similar shapes, the addition of foliated or scroll ornament completing the transition from the practical shield to the ornamental one. An interesting instance of this duplication of form occurs in the shield from a fifteenth century monument in St. Gatien Cathedral (Fig. 25). With the recognition of the purely ornamental character of the shield-form the placing of the spear opening on the naturally correct side, the dexter, ceased to be thought important, and it was placed indifferently on one side or the other, and when such shields occur in pairs, as in those on the Pirckheimer bookplate by Dürer, the bouche-derived curves are placed symmetrically on opposite sides.