tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.
I started a thread a month or so ago with a helm that showed similar wings in a St. Sebastian context - but 100 years later.
Found another winged helm in some other antique context.
Will post them later.
Why is this 'clearly'? Looking at the left arm of the 1st man and the neck of the second man we see highly textured surfaces that might be maile or might be cloth. The repetitive arcs are not nearly as detailed as what the artist was capable of achieving in a tighter space. Also the maile doesn't have alternating rows of ))) with ((( which tends to be more typical for artistic representation of maile. And if they are maile, what are they doing there and what holds them in shape?
Let me propose an alternate interpretation. The 'wings', of which we only see 1 clearly and don't know what the peak on the other side of the head is, seem to attach to the usual side pivot points. Is it possible that there is 1 'wing' and it is a foreshortened view of a side-pivot houndskull visor that has been flipped all the way to the rear? The wing tip would then be the pointed chin and the crescents the breaths.
I admit that maile is more likely than a hinged cheek-plate because the cheeks are covered but when I see something that is clearly and only 1 interpretation it does make sense to re-evaluate our perceptions. Since all the ))) face a single direction like feather tips it could very well be that the sculptor has depicted a man with wings on his helmet. Yeah, it sounds silly but if we didn't have solid evidence of Polish Hussars riding into battle with wings on their back I'd have said the idea was crazy.
Sean
