Fig. 183.—Lock-plate. German. From the Town Hall, Nuremberg.
Fig. 184.—Decorated Hinge in Pierced and Chiselled Metal. German. Seventeenth Century.
Fig. 185.—Lock-plate. Chiselled Iron. French. Fifteenth Century.
Fig. 186.—Bolt-plate.
French.
Sixteenth Century.
The French lock-plate in chiselled iron (Fig. 185) was in the Spitzer Collection, and is decorated with the crowned Arms of France, and with Navarre, Aragon, Bearn and Bourbon quarterly and with a coat at top repeated on either side, consisting of three pommes de pin, or pine cones. The fleur-de-lis in Gothic tracery on the hasp is also notable. Fig. 186 bears the crowned Arms of France surrounded by the beautiful collar of St. Michael. Below is the well-known monogram which combines the initials of Henry II and of Diana de Poitiers, and her badge of crescents forms a circular device interlaced within the guilloche border, and a further allusion to her goddess namesake occurs in the bows and arrows at the sides. A fellow bolt-plate in the same collection has the Arms of France dimidiating those of Medici and Dauphiny on the shield at top, and in place of the crescent badge below, is a rainbow in clouds and surrounded by laurel; and the monogram, a double K for Queen Katherine, is several times repeated.
