Two Medieval Knights in Heraldic Trappers, Spanish Cavalry Lithograph, 1861

Two mounted knights meet on open ground in this hand colored lithograph from the Album de la Caballería Española, published in Madrid in 1861. On the left a knight in mail and a closed great helm crested with red and white plumes sits a bay horse caparisoned in white, a lance with a pennon over his shoulder and a long shield at his back. On the right a second knight in a yellow great helm reins in a prancing dark horse whose trapper is worked in yellow with black lions and red and white bars, the same arms repeated on his shield, with a striped pennon on his lance. A walled town with pointed spires rises in the haze behind them.

The stone is signed "Villegas" at lower left, and the margin is lettered "Villegas dibujó y litografió." (Villegas drew and lithographed it) at left and "Lit. Militar S. Bernardino 7 Madrid." at right, the military lithographic press in the Calle de San Bernardino that printed the album. The plate carries no title of its own.

The Album de la Caballería Española was the work of Serafín María de Sotto, Count of Clonard, the leading Spanish military historian of his day. It traces the dress and arms of the Spanish cavalry from its earliest centuries to the reign of Isabel II in a long series of oblong plates drawn and lithographed by Villegas, each printed with a tint stone and colored by hand. The medieval plates, with their heraldic horse trappings and closed helms, are among the most decorative in the series.

The coloring is fresh and confident: strong yellow and red in the trappings, soft blue in the sky and warm earth tones in the ground, all held within a rounded double ruled border. It is a striking piece of Spanish military and heraldic imagery, and a natural companion to other plates from the album, to prints of arms and armor, or to a collection of equestrian subjects.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.