# Helmet all'Antica > Attributed to Filippo Negroli - ca. 1532-35 (the Museum's 2012 article gives ca. 1530-35) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/filippo-negroli/negroli-helmet-allantica/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Attributed to Filippo Negroli - **Date:** ca. 1532-35 (the Museum's 2012 article gives ca. 1530-35) - **Medium:** Steel, per the online record; steel, copper alloy and leather per the Museum's 2012 article - **Dimensions:** Online record: H. 11 1/4 in., printed as 85 cm; W. 20.9 cm; D. 22.7 cm; Wt. 964 g. The Museum's 2012 article: H. 12 3/4 in. (32.5 cm); Wt. 967 g. The figures do not agree and the metric height online is inconsistent with the imperial figure beside it. - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** Italian, Milan, second quarter of the sixteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 374 - **Attribution:** attributed ## Summary A Milanese parade helmet of about 1532-35, embossed from steel as a head of tightly curled hair under a wreath of oak leaves, so that the wearer appeared as an ancient hero. The oak may be a pun on the name of the della Rovere, dukes of Urbino, though nothing documents the connection. It is attributed to Filippo Negroli and is not signed.The Museum's own publications do not agree about it. The online record gives a height of 11 1/4 inches converted as 85 centimetres, a figure that is wrong by a factor of three on its own arithmetic; the Museum's 2012 article gives 12 3/4 inches and adds copper alloy and leather to a medium the website lists as steel alone. The metallography carried out for the Museum's 1998 Negroli exhibition sampled the helmet in three parts and found two of them iron, where every sampled armour signed by Filippo Negroli was steel. The cheek-pieces are, the Museum says, probably nineteenth-century restorations.It came out of the estate sale of Eugene Piot at the Hotel Drouot in May 1890, lot 282, bought by the dealer Bachereau for the duc de Dino, and reached New York in April 1904 when the Metropolitan bought Dino's five hundred pieces sight unseen for just over 250,000 dollars - a purchase that founded the Department of Arms and Armor and that the Museum has since published as containing composites and outright fakes. The Museum's bibliography for this helmet begins with the posthumous sale of the painter and armour restorer Mariano Fortuny in 1875. Its provenance field does not. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1532-35-unknown** Made in Milan, attributed to Filippo Negroli `[disputed]` (origin) Not signed. The Museum's heading is 'Attributed to Filippo Negroli'; Pyhrr's 2012 article captions the same accession simply as Filippo Negroli. The 1998 exhibition catalogue placed it in the group attributed to Filippo rather than in the group of signed works. The oak wreath may be a canting reference to the della Rovere family, dukes of Urbino, whose name means oak, but no document connects the helmet to any member of that family. - **unknown-1875** Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (possible) `[disputed]` (disputed link) The first entry in the Museum's own bibliography for this object is the catalogue of the posthumous studio sale of Fortuny at the Hotel Drouot, Paris, 26-30 April 1875, cited at number 20; the Museum also cites Stephen V. Grancsay's article of November 1921, 'Fortuny as a Collector and Restorer of Ancient Arms and Armor', at pp. 236-237, fig. 4. Neither Fortuny nor the 1875 sale appears in the Museum's provenance field, which begins with Piot. Either the bibliography is wrong or the provenance is short by one owner - and that owner was a documented restorer of arms and armour, on a helmet whose cheek-pieces the Museum believes are nineteenth-century restorations. - **by 1890-1890** Eugene Piot, Paris `[documented]` (ownership to death) Piot died in 1890. The Museum's bibliography also records the helmet in Edouard de Beaumont's account of the retrospective armour display at the Trocadero, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, May 1878, p. 711 - twelve years before the sale. - **1890** Louis Bachereau, Paris, buying for the duc de Dino `[documented]` (auction purchase by a dealer) Estate sale, Objets d'art de la Renaissance composant la collection de feu M. Eugene Piot, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 21-24 May 1890, lot 282, sold to Bachereau for Dino. Pyhrr describes what Bachereau bought as an important if somewhat damaged curly-haired burgonet of classical inspiration. Bachereau was Dino's principal supplier and sold him more than forty European helmets, including, the following year, the so-called Colbert helmet. - **1890-1904** Charles Maurice Camille de Talleyrand-Perigord, duc de Dino (1843-1917), Paris `[documented]` (private collection) Catalogued as B.26, plate 9, in Baron Charles Alexander de Cosson's privately printed Le Cabinet d'Armes de Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Duc de Dino (Paris, 1901), p. 31. Dino's collection of almost five hundred pieces was then reckoned the finest private armoury in Europe. - **1904-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase en bloc) Bought in April 1904 as part of the whole Dino collection, Rogers Fund, accession 04.3.202. The Museum committed just over 250,000 dollars, the largest sum it had paid to that date for a single acquisition, and bought the collection sight unseen on the recommendation of a trustee, without reference to Dino's own catalogue. The purchase led to the appointment of Bashford Dean and, on 28 October 1912, to the founding of the Department of Arms and Armor. On view in Gallery 374 in 2026. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1890-05-21** Hotel Drouot, Paris, Objets d'art de la Renaissance composant la collection de feu M. Eugene Piot, 21-24 May 1890, lot 282 - Hammer: Not published - With premium: Not published - Sold to the Paris dealer Louis Bachereau acting for the duc de Dino. No price for this lot appears in the sources consulted, and none should be inferred: Pyhrr publishes figures for several other Dino acquisitions - 25,000 francs for the Fountaine armour, about 40,000 francs for seven lots at another sale, 52,000 francs for a sword - and gives none for this helmet. Anyone who finds a figure for this lot should establish what charges it does or does not include before quoting it; this record makes no claim about Paris auction practice in 1890, having found no source for one. - **1904-04** Private treaty, Paris to New York, Purchase en bloc of the collection of the duc de Dino - Hammer: Not applicable - With premium: Not applicable - Just over 250,000 dollars for almost five hundred pieces - the largest sum the Metropolitan Museum had paid to that date for a single acquisition, and it was paid without anyone from the Museum having seen the collection. This is a total for the whole purchase and NOT a price for this object; no per-object allocation has been published. Not an auction: a negotiated purchase, so there is no hammer and no premium. ## Exhibitions - Loan Exhibition of Mediaeval and Renaissance Arms and Armor from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 26, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, then the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, then the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1953-54, 1953 - Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries, 8 October 1998 - 17 January 1999, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998 - I Della Rovere: Storia di una dinastia, 4 April - 3 October 2004, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 2004 - On view, Gallery 374, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2026 ## Literature - Hotel Drouot, Atelier de Fortuny, Oeuvre Posthume, Paris, 26-30 April 1875, no. 20 - cited by the Museum for this object; NOT read - Edouard de Beaumont, 'Les Armures et les Armes Anciennes au Trocadero', Gazette des Beaux-Arts (May 1878), p. 711 - NOT read - Paul Chevallier, Objets d'art de la Renaissance: Tableaux [Piot sale], Hotel Drouot, Paris, 21-24 May 1890, no. 282 - NOT read - Charles Alexander de Cosson, Le Cabinet d'Armes de Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Duc de Dino (Paris, 1901), p. 31, no. B 26, pl. 9 - NOT read - Bashford Dean, Catalogue of European Arms and Armor (New York: MMA, 1905), p. 113, fig. 49H - NOT read - Guy Francis Laking, A Record of European Armour and Arms Through Seven Centuries, IV (London, 1920-22), p. 142, fig. 1229 - NOT read - Stephen V. Grancsay, 'Fortuny as a Collector and Restorer of Ancient Arms and Armor', Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (November 1921), pp. 236-237, fig. 4 - NOT read; the single most useful item still to obtain for this record - Francis Henry Cripps-Day, A Record of Armour Sales, 1881-1924 (London, 1925), p. 25 - NOT read - Lionello G. Boccia and Eduardo T. Coelho, L'Arte dell'Armatura in Italia (Milan, 1967), p. 329 - NOT read - Mario Scalini, Armature all'eroica dei Negroli, Specchio del Bargello 38 (Florence, 1987) - NOT read - Stuart W. Pyhrr and Jose-A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries, exh. cat. (New York: MMA, 1998), cat. no. 21 - NOT read directly; the catalogue number and its placement come from Williams 1999 - Alan R. Williams, 'The Steel of the Negroli', Metropolitan Museum Journal 34 (1999) - READ in full - Stuart W. Pyhrr, 'Armor for America: The Duc de Dino Collection', Metropolitan Museum Journal 47 (2012) - READ in full ## Open questions - Which three parts of the helmet did Williams sample, and were the two iron specimens taken from the cheek-pieces the Museum believes are nineteenth-century restorations? The published table gives the result per object but not the location on the object, and the answer decides whether the metallurgy supports the attribution or complicates it. - Was the helmet in Mariano Fortuny y Marsal's collection and sold at his posthumous sale on 26-30 April 1875 as number 20? The Museum's bibliography for this object begins there and its provenance field does not mention it. - Which is correct, the online height of 11 1/4 in. or the 12 3/4 in. given in the Museum's own 2012 article - and where did the metric figure of 85 cm come from, given that 11 1/4 in. is 28.6 cm? - Is the medium steel alone, as the online record says, or steel with copper alloy and leather, as the 2012 article says? - Was the helmet made for a della Rovere? The oak wreath is a canting device on the family name and the Museum lent the object to the della Rovere exhibition at Urbino in 2004, but no document connects it to any member of the family. - What did the helmet fetch at the Piot sale in May 1890, and what did Bachereau charge Dino for it? Pyhrr publishes figures for several other Dino purchases and not for this one. - How much of the 250,000 dollars the Museum paid in 1904 is notionally attributable to this object? Dino's collection was bought en bloc and no item-level allocation is published. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Helmet all'Antica, Attributed to Filippo Negroli, accession 04.3.202. Overview, provenance, exhibition history and references tabs read 4 August 2026. - [2] Stuart W. Pyhrr, 'Armor for America: The Duc de Dino Collection', Metropolitan Museum Journal 47 (2012), pp. 183-230, including Appendix 1, 'Too Good to Be True: Arms and Armor Fakes and Pastiches in the Dino Collection', and Appendix 2, the concordance of Dino catalogue numbers to Museum accession numbers. Full PDF downloaded from the Museum and read. - [3] Alan R. Williams, 'The Steel of the Negroli', Metropolitan Museum Journal 34 (1999), pp. 101-124. Metallographic examination carried out for the 1998-99 exhibition. Full PDF downloaded from the Museum and read. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 21974: isPublicDomain true, medium 'Steel', dimensions 'H. 11 1/4 in. (85 cm); W. 8 1/4 in. (20.9 cm); D. 9 in. (22.7 cm); Wt. 2 lb. 2 oz. (964 g)', classification 'Helmets'. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Burgonet, Filippo Negroli, dated 1543, accession 17.190.1720, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 - one of the three signed Negroli works sampled by Williams. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Composed Armor, Wolfgang Grosschedel and Franz Grosschedel, ca. 1550-80, accession 04.3.278, Rogers Fund 1904 - a documented composite from the same purchase. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.