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These steel gauntlets are decorated with palm branches, laurel wreaths, weapons and trophies alluding to their military associations. These associations however are merely symbolic. The gauntlets were not designed to protect the hands but to project an image. They probably come from one of three identically-decorated parade armours commissioned for the sons of King Phillip III of Spain in around 1614. The armours survive in the Royal Armouries in Madrid. The gauntlets are thoroughly international in their decoration and style. The gold and silver has been applied using damascening, a technique European craftsmen imported from counties to the east such as Syria (Damascus), Egypt and Turkey. Decorating candlesticks, bowls and armour alike, this method involves inlaying gold and silver wire into engraved channels on the surface of the metal. In Europe this generally took the form of an overlay, as on these gauntlets, but the effect is much the same. Damascening came to Europe via Venice and was a particular favourite of the armourers of Milan. The Madrid armouries contain a number of damascened Milanese armours which may have provided a source of inspiration for these gauntlets and their associated armours. The gauntlets evoke continuation rather than change at the start of the seventeeth century. They are from the last great period of the all-over body armours commissioned by noblemen for no purpose other than to impress. Recent art history has tended to separate armour and weapons from art. It assumes that all armour is primarily utilitarian and that the violence and blood-letting with which it is associated is the antithesis of taste and style. The centrality of military subjects to the privileged fields of painting and sculpture however might suggest otherwise. The Museum bought the gauntlets in 1888 from the Londesborough Sale for £183.15.0. Historical significance: The gauntlets probably come from one of three identically-decorated parade armours commissioned for the sons of King Phillip III of Spain in around 1614.