Results: 1
-
View: Detail
-
- Description
- Provenance
- Marks/Inscriptions
- Further Reading
-
- A26 ARMOUR IN IMITATION MAXIMILIAN STYLE
Composed of:
CLOSE-HELMET, made up of: SKULL, fluted and further enhanced by three roped combs. The skull is pierced by six pairs of lining holes; VISOR of bellows type, with two horizontal sights, the five ridges-broadly roped, with pairs of narrow slits for breathing between them; visor-peg for raising and lowering, on the right side, and two notches in the upper and lower edges for securing it; BEVOR, pivoted at the same points as the visor, spring-catch on the right side. The bottom edge of skull and bevor is boldly roped and fits onto its own small gorget-plates, these number two (front and back), fluted, the lowest edge with doubly sunk border and roped.
The visor of the close-helmet is locked into the closed position by a spring-loaded stud which projects through the right side of the brow and acts in a notch in the upper edge of the visor. When the visor is raised it is supported by this stud acting in a similar notch on the lower edge of the visor. This feature is also to be found on the helmet sometimes ascribed to the Elector Frederick of Saxony, possibly by Lorenz Helmschmid, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 04.3.286), and on a helmet formerly thought to be a piece of exchange for this armour also in the Metropolitan Museum (inv. no. 29.150.6; Kienbusch and Grancsay, 1933, no. 7, pI. XVl).
Large GORGET of four plates in front and four at the rear, the two assemblies hinged and fastened with a stud and key-hole slot; the upper edge of the neck hollowed and roped; it is extended on each side by two lames covering the shoulders, fluted and roped; hinged sprockets for the pauldrons. The principal lame bears on its lower edge the Nuremberg guild mark (but with the dexter and sinister sides of the shield reversed like those upon the cuisses); the left shoulder lame is stamped with another mark of a cross between four indistinct charges. This mark and the manner of the fluting suggest that this gorget does not belong to the rest. Inside the front plate of the gorget, near the lower edge, is struck a small Gothic n within a circle with a pearled edge. A similar n, but without the pearled circle, is struck on the inside of the top lame of each cuisse. The same mark occurs inside a Nuremberg armour of about 1500, formerly in the possession of R. T. Gwynn (C. Blair, European armour, 1958, pI. 39). The plates on the points of each shoulder of the gorget are associated and the plates connecting them to the gorget are nineteenth-century.
BREASTPLATE with sharply pointed central ridge, the upper edge and gussets strongly ridged and finely roped; pierced and etched at the top with the Imperial double-headed eagle and is flanged on its lower edge for the skirt; the plackart is secured to the breastplate at the centre by a rivet with a heart-shaped head. At the top is a strong staple for the attachment of a buff. There is no lance-rest or holes for one. Brass buckles for the shoulder straps; below the flanged upper edge is stamped the Nuremberg guild mark; FRONT SKIRT of three and rounded; spreading TASSETS of four lames, the latter are attached by four hinges of steel. The tassets are associated. Originally, they were attached to the lowest lame of their skirt by rivets and articulating leathers. The lowest lame of each poleyn is a later replacement. The sunk borders of the poleyn wings bear traces of trios of transverse lines left in relief by etching.
BACKPLATE, sculpted to accommodate the shoulder blades; at the base a circular panel pierced and etched with a fleur-de-lys, the flanged lame at the base extending upwards to cover the aperture so formed; the shoulder straps are attached by steel hinges stamped with a circular punch of trefoils enclosed within a pearled border; at the top the Nuremberg guild mark; REAR SKIRT of two lames.
PAULDRONS composed of six plates, the principal one of the right pauldron cut away in front to allow for the couched lance; the uppermost lame of both is holed to take the sprockets on the gorget, and is stamped with the Nuremberg guild mark.
VAMBRACES, each consisting of an upper cannon of three lames with a cylindrical turning-joint; couter of three lames with a small heart-shaped side-wing stamped with the Nuremberg guild mark, the inner side of the joint is protected by a voider of plate made up of fourteenth articulated plates. The inside edge of the vambraces and all the edges of the voider lames are cut in 'castellated' notches; hinged lower cannon.
MITTEN GAUNTLETS with hinged bell-shaped cuffs, six metacarpal and five mitten lames with a roped knuckle-guard; the principal lame for the thumb is not hinged, but formed by the extension of one of the metacarpal-plates.
These gauntlets, although of the period, do not belong to the rest.
CUISSES with strongly ridged and roped upper edge, to which has been added a lame with a smaller roping on sliding rivets, the uppermost bearing the Nuremberg guild mark, but, as on the gorget, having the dexter and sinister sides of the shield reversed. These cuisses possess the unusual feature of having ten laminated plates hinged to the inner side of the thigh, the top and lowest edges being roped; POLEYNS, each of four lames with large side-wing, the lowest lame pierced with a key-hole slot for the turning-pin on the greaves.
The plate voiders at the back of the legs are nineteenth-century additions. A drawing by R. P. Bonington (1802-28) in the British Museum (inv. no. 1939,10-14,9) shows this armour before these plates were added, and with plain mid sixteenth-century sabatons.
GREAVES, sculpted to the calves and each fastening in two places with a stud and hook-and-eye; the upper edge extended well under the poleyn; square staples at the back; integral SABATONS (restored) of eight lames, the toe-plates of the bear-paw type, square at the front and embossed at the centre to a roped ridge; eight-pointed rowel spurs. The greaves are associated and the spurs nineteenth-century.
German (Nuremberg), c. 1612.
Skelton I, pI. XXII; the besagew represented in fig. 7 is probably the nineteenth-century one now in store, but until 1962 exhibited on A49; Meyrick Catalogue, p. x and no. 355; Laking: European Armour III, fig. 1038.
Provenance: General Amielle; Sir S. R. Meyrick; Frédéric Spitzer; helmet: comte de Nieuwerkerke.
Exhibited: Manchester Art Treasures, 1857 (Planché, 1857, p. 11), S. Kensington, 1869 (Illustrated London News, LIV, 1869, p. 288, no. 11). Helmet: De Beaumont Catalogue, pl. 7.
Compare with the half-armour A27.
This is a late example of the fluted style. The flutes are rigidly parallel and have not the hollow section of earlier fluting (cf. nos. A24-5). All borders are heavily roped, and doubly sunk. For a note on other armours with plackarts pierced with a double eagle and with similar, large, rounded tassets, see A27, which belongs to the same group. The piercing of the backplate with a fleur-de-lys can be compared with one formerly in the Hearst Collection, pierced with the sea-lion of Imhof of Nuremberg, and now in the Royal Armouries. Note the laminations at the back of the thigh and knee, which overlap both downwards and upwards.
Other details suggest that the reversed Nuremberg marks on gorget and cuisses are genuine; it is an easy mistake to forget to reverse the design when engraving a punch. The second mark on the gorget occurs on a fluted armour from the Stead Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. inv. no. 1/1-1936) and on a breastplate of the early sixteenth century once in the possession of Mr. Douglas Ash. The same mark also occurs on a fluted breastplate in a private collection in Florence (M. Scalini, letter of 28 June 1983).
A trefoil, not an armourer's mark but an ornamental motif, is found on the shoulder straps, which are probably restorations.
The fluted helmet now associated with this armour was formerly separate. It takes the place of the plain Helmschmied close-helmet which was already on it in Meyrick's time (A163), but was quite incongruous.
‘Voiders of plate’ inside the joints of the limbs are usually found on late armours of c. 1600, but there are examples from the first half of the sixteenth century, e.g. of King Henry VIII in the Royal Armouries, and Wallace Collection A24; they are also present on A27, another example of the Maximilian style revival in Nuremberg, c. 1612. Voiders of plate at the back of the leg, as here, are much rarer than inside the elbow.
Meyrick states (Skelton I, pI. XXII) that this armour 'was brought from Vienna by the French General, Amielle, who was afterwards killed at Waterloo, and tradition assigns it to Ferdinand, King of the Romans'. This would be Ferdinand I (1503-64), brother of Charles V. The suit itself affords no specific evidence in support of the tradition, but it may well have been in the Imperial Armoury at Vienna when that collection was looted by Napoleon's army in 1805 and 1810.
The cuirasses of both A 26 and A 27 have in common the very unusual two-piece construction of their breastplates, with a lower plate overlapping the upper plate, rather in the manner of a German 'gothic' breastplate, as well as the decorative piercing and etching of both breast and back, the unusual flat areas between the ridges, and the very finely roped turns of their edges. Each of these features is also found on all the cuirasses listed in the comparative material in the 1962 Catalogue under A27, with the exception of the Stuyvesant one now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 49.163.1). This last has concave flutes between the ridges and thick, very heavily roped turned edges above the waist, and flat areas between the ridges and finely roped edges on the skirt and tassets only. The armour listed in the 1962 Catalogue as being in the National Museum, Copenhagen, is now deposited in the Tøjhusmuseum (Cat. No. D14). As pointed out by J. F. Hayward (J.A.A.S., I, pp. 41-2) the Hebray and Baron armours are one and the same, as stated in the catalogue of the Baron sale, Roussel, Paris, 21 January 1846, lot 217 (Cripps Day, Armour Sales, p. XL, n. 2), but this cannot be the Tøjhus one because that is apparently identifiable in an inventory of 1775 (K. Nielsen, letter of 19th November 1982). The breastplate at Turin (No. C22) is pierced with the figures of the Virgin and Child, and St. Christopher.
A breast and separate backplate in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (inv. nos. W1342 and W2111 respectively), also of this type, are both pierced with a two-tailed mermaid, probably referring to the arms of the Nuremberg patrician family of Reiter von Kornburg. They also have a backplate of this type pierced by a fleur-de-lys (inv. no. W 1024). In the Musée de l' Armée, Paris, is another cuirass of this type also pierced by a two-tailed mermaid (inv. no. G.292). Both Wallace Collection breastplates, of A26 and A27, have their central point drawn out in the German fashion of the 1540s, while others are of late peascod form, for example that at Paris and the cuirass from the Hearst Collection, now in the Royal Armouries (inv. no. III. 1288-9). The last is dated on its back-plate 1612, and pierced with a heraldic sea-lion which may refer to the arms of the Nuremberg patrician family of Imhof (Dufty and Reid, 1968, pls. CXIV, and CXV top left).
The arms and pauldrons of A26, with their unusual flat areas between the ridges and their finely roped edges, are clearly related to all these cuirasses, while the plates covering the back of the hands on a pair of gauntlets in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (unnumbered) which also have these features, also have castellated edges like those of the inner lames of the arms of A26. Unusually long and flaring cuffs occur on two related pairs of gauntlets, in the Musée de I' Armée, Paris (inv. no G.18), and Glasgow Museums (inv. no E.1939.65.j). The long cuffs of these gauntlets and the finely roped edges confirm a seventeenth-century date for this group of armours. B. Thomas (1964) pointed out that the date 1612 on the Royal Armouries cuirass coincides with that of the state visit to Nuremberg of the Emperor Matthias, after his coronation, and he therefore suggested that these armours might have been made for a guard of burghers dressed in what was then thought to be the style of Albrecht Dürer's time. In this case the remarkable width of the arms of A26 may be because they were intended to be worn over a buff coat in the seventeenth-century fashion. The Stuyvesant breastplate, which is undoubtedly early, may have formed a model for the construction of the later breastplate with which it is certainly connected in having tassets of the same type.
- A26 ARMOUR IN IMITATION MAXIMILIAN STYLE