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- Date: 15th century - 19th century
- Medium: Low- and medium carbon steels, leather
- Weight: 2.1 kg, helmet
- Weight: 1.36 kg, bevor
- Weight: 2.34 kg, breastplate
- Weight: 1.97 kg, plackart and skirt
- Weight: 3.64 kg, backplate
- Weight: 1.5 kg, left rerebrace, couter and vambrace
- Weight: 1.2 kg, right rerebrace, couter and vambrace
- Weight: 0.3 kg, left gauntlet
- Weight: 0.34 kg, right gauntlet
- Weight: 0.17 kg, rondel
- Weight: 0.13 kg, rondel
- Weight: 1.49 kg, left cuisse
- Weight: 1.6 kg, right cuisse
- Weight: 0.85 kg, left greave
- Weight: 0.85 kg, right greave
- Weight: 0.41 kg, left sabaton
- Weight: 0.41 kg, right sabaton
- Inv: A20
- Location: Arms and Armour II
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- Description
- Marks/Inscriptions
- Further Reading
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- A20 COMPOSITE FIELD ARMOUR
This armour is typical of display composites put together in the nineteenth century by dealers for collectors who wished to possess a complete late medieval armour, when originals are rare in the extreme. Its components are very mixed. The sallet is Flemish, the sabatons Italian of the 15th century (both elements are very rare). The bevor, the breastplate, the right spaudler with integral upper cannon, and the right couter are all South German, of the same period; the other parts of the present arm and shoulder plates, including the besagews were made in the nineteenth century, as was the backplate, to complete the armour. The gauntlets carry the mark of the Treytz workshop at Innsbruck, and were probably made there in the 1480s. The leg defences are later, dating from the early years of the sixteenth century; the greaves have been modified by the nineteenth-century restorer to give them a fifteenth-century form at the ankles. The visor and mail valances below the knees, present until the early twentieth century, have been removed. A pair of fluted tassets once associated with this armour were later found to belong to the parts of an Italian jousting armour in the Collection (A 61), to which they have been restored.
The armour is composed of:
SALLET, with a strong central ridge of keel form cut with a key-hole slot for a helmet ornament and a row of flush-headed rivets for the lining; a pair of holes on either side for a chin strap and at the back. The lower edges have been turned inwards in the welted style typical of Flemish sallets made in the last two decades of the fifteenth century (see Capwell 2021). At the back is an armourer's mark of a crowned orb and cross, belonging to a Brussels master, probably Anthonis Ghindertaelen or his father Lancelot (see Terjanian 2019). This helmet was originally intended to be worn open-faced; the visor holes, and the associated visor (now removed) are modern. One of the soldiers in The Unjust Judge by Gerard David in the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, of about 1448, shows just such a sallet in wear without a visor, while, closer in date to the present sallet, a number are illustrated in the Beauchamp Pageant in the British Library, illustrated by a Flemish artist working in England in the early 1480s.
BEVOR, quite heavy, with one falling plate kept in position by a spring catch, the upper edge strongly turned; the lower part shaped to the chin with a single curved flute on either side below, and a row of round-headed rivets for the lining; stamped twice in front with an armourer's mark.
BREASTPLATE made in two parts, an upper breastplate and the lower plackart. The former has sliding gussets at the sides and these are accompanied by two curved flutes, the upper edge slightly ridged. Three large holes in the centre (arranged vertically) for fixing the plackart. The plackart, secured to the upper breastplate with a screw, has a slight central ridge, is doubly fluted on either side and rises to a shaped finial in the middle of the breast; a skirt of three lames hangs from the lower edge of the plackart.
BACKPLATE (modern), composed of six lames with deep rear skirt of four lames, the edges V-shaped and beveled, decorated with double rows of shallow fluting in the form of a cross.
ARM-DEFENCES consisting of SPAUDLERS with integral REREBRACES (upper cannons), each assembly composed of seven lames in total, the edges cusped; large COUTERS pierced with five holes for attachment by means of arming points, and VAMBRACES (lower cannons), each of one plate covering the dorsal side of the forearm only. The whole of the left arm and the lower vambrace of the right are modern.
MITTEN GAUNTLETS with pointed cuffs. Four metacarpal plates (the first embossed for the ulna); three ridged finger plates and thumb-piece of four scales. The thumb plates are modern restorations. The right gauntlet bears the clover-leaf mark of the Treytz family, armourers of Innsbruck, and there are traces of the same mark on the left gauntlet.
RONDELS or BESAGEWS of oval form decorated with hollow radiating fluting, both modern.
CUISSES built of five plates, the chief one having its upper edge strongly ridged to a triangular section, the top lames work on sliding rivets of unusual length; they are extended round the thigh by additional plates on the outer sides. POLEYNS of five lames, the top one has a sunk border running horizontally across the thigh, the side-wing is kidney-shaped. The lower lames have been pierced with small holes for the attachment of a fringe of mail in modern times (now removed).
GREAVES hinged and fastening on studs, dating from the early sixteenth century. They did not originally fully encircle the legs. They have been enlarged by the insertion of longitudinal additions down each side; they are fastened to the poleyns by turning pins.
SABATONS of twelve lames with pointed toes and stamped at the sides with the sacred monogram I H S and the word U R B A N, apparently an armourer’s mark. Two plates above the instep and a heel-plate (hinged), with a similar extension at the back. Italian sabatons of plate of this date are of great rarity; the only other known pair of Italian fifteenth-century sabatons to survive are those from the collection of Sir Edward Barry now in the Royal Armouries (III.1384).
For the MAIL exhibited with this armour, see A6.
Comprehensively 1470-1520.
Laking, European Armour vol. II, pp. 3, 216, 218, Fig. 77.
Edge and Williams, ‘A Suit of Armour Produced by Five Workshops’ (2014).
Böheim's attribution (copied from Martinez del Romero's Cat. del Real Armeria de Madrid, 1849) of the mark of a crowned orb to one, Jacques de Voys of Brussels, is incorrect; the mark belongs to a different Brussels master, probably Anthonis Ghindertaelen or his father Lancelot (see Terjanian 2019). This mark occurs on a helm and arm-piece in the Musée de l’Armée, Brussels (II 39, 40); on the armour of Philip the Handsome at Madrid (A 11), which is known to have come from Flanders; on a sallet, ibid., D 16; on a left arm in the Czartoriski Museum in Cracow (Zygulski, Arsenal I, 1, 195); on the polder-mitten of a jousting armour in the Scott Collection (ex-Zouche), now in Glasgow Museums, and twice on one of the helms in St. George's Chapel at Windsor (Blair, The Connoisseur, May 1961).
The mark of crossed sceptres in a shield on the bevor occurs on a German breastplate in Brussels (II, 2), on the left gauntlet of a composite 'gothic' armour in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and on the gauntlets of another composite German armour at Windsor Castle.
For the clover-leaf mark of the Treytz family working at Innsbruck in the 15th and early 16th centuries, which is stamped on the gauntlets, cf. the instances at Churburg (cat. nos. 24, 25, 27 and 30), Bern, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Catalogue of Innsbruck Armour, 1954, Nos. 1-4, Konrad Treytz, and 16, Jörg or Adrian Treytz).
The mark on the sabatons probably identifies them with a pair in a sale by George Robins on 10 June, 1833, lot 63, and there described as 'brought from Rome'. Furthermore, the mark also identifies these sabatons as the pair exhibited at the Oplotheca in both 1816 and 1817 as no. 199, and in 1818 as no. 1-6 1, and in the 'Gothic Hall', Pall Mall, in 1819, as no. 170, when they were first said to have come from Rome. At the exhibition known as ‘The Royal Armoury, Haymarket’ (after 1820), they were shown as no. 181.
- A20 COMPOSITE FIELD ARMOUR