The “Lion Armor”

Italian or French, 1545-1555

Image copyright Pyhrr and Godoy

In sixteenth-century Europe, the approach of the Modern age was felt by the landed gentry as a rotting of the teeth and a wheeze of the breath. The ruling class of the Middle Ages was now middle-aged itself, finding that the dashing clothes it wore in its youth no longer fit and besides they were out of style. The secure life their predecessors bought for them – at the cost of hundreds of years of internecine warfare – came with an unexpected irrelevance and impotence. To combat this, the upper class looked to ally itself with the celebrated, almost mythical past – as the ancient Romans had, as the contemporary medievalist (like the author) does. Renaissance classicism glorified the ancients for their accomplishments and, by implication, glorified their descendents as well. Michelangelo’s “David” (referencing ancient Greek sculpture) and his design for Saint Peter’s Basilica (recalling ancient Roman architecture) were an early, roundabout form of conspicuous consumption.

Though painting, architecture, and sculpture were the primary venues for classicist works, the military world was affected as well. In the 1500s, the knight – expensive to train and arm, an emblem of upper class superiority – was increasingly lame as a fighting unit. The Battle of Pavia in 1525, where around 1,500 conscripts with matchlock guns demolished a force of French cavalry four times as large, clearly demonstrated that cheap, mass units of foot soldiers with impersonal weapons like guns and pikes, allied with capitalistic mercenary groups, could make paragons of chivalry feel sharply the cramping of weak muscles and creaking in aged joints. But Renaissance armorers could also tap into that weakness and supersede it with a style called “all’antica”: armor made “in the antique mode”.

Image copyright Pyhrr and Godoy

The Lion Armor is a beautiful piece of art; that much is plain. Even as a symbol of social decay, it is among the finest full harnesses extant (now in the Royal Armouries, Leeds). The rounded shapes of the sixteenth-century Italian style reveal the silhouette, which is that of a slim man, roughly six feet tall, not likely more than 200 pounds. The smooth surfaces have been etched and gilt, the designs creeping vines of gold on the dark background of the metal, which has otherwise been left unpolished or “rough from the hammer”. All the edges have been rolled and chiseled to emulate the look of rope, including the edges of the visor of the close helmet, which is pierced in a circular, solar pattern.

The pride of the suit is the embossing, in the form of eleven growling lion’s heads – as old a Classical image of martial prowess as there is – on the toe caps, knees, gauntlet cuffs, elbows, shoulders, and crown of the helmet. These have been hammered out of plates of steel which would have begun as thicker than the surrounding pieces, because the embossing would drastically thin the metal, a danger for an armor worn in combat. (And the Lion Armor did see combat, probably in a tournament: there are sword-cuts on the left side of the visor.) The fluting seen in German Gothic armors proved that craftsmen could sculpt the steel with simple lines to add both beauty and strength. In the Lion Armor, that sculpture is purely decorative, yet still integrated into fighting harness, both beautiful and effective.

The Lion Armor, then, is a successful work of fantasy-come-true. It is as remarkable a work of art as it is a functional tool of war, made for a man more likely a wannabe than a warrior. The decoration of this armor proclaims life and power: the etching, reminiscent of plant life; the gilding, bright yellow like the sunlight superseding the dun steel; the ferocious lions in positions of strength, guiding the hands, feet, and head of the wearer, calling back to the lion skin of the indomitable Heracles. A man in this armor is donning a myth, adopting a persona in the hope that it makes for a brighter future.

Next time, the armor we look at will make a darker prediction, and one that actually came true.

Works Cited:

Pyhrr, Stuart W. and Jose A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1998, New York

Armor Review: Gothic Armor for Man and Horse

Gothic Armor for Man and Horse

German, late fifteenth century

Image Copyright Edge and Paddock 1996

This is the very image of the knight in shining armor, encased in steel, seemingly immune to harm. High on his horse, which is also clad in metal, he looks down through his visor with the pride of the invulnerable, like a gunner out of the turret of a tank. This is more or less what the knight inside this armor is: a medieval tank, able to deliver powerful blows to the enemy from a mobile platform, while being threatened only by other knights. Pound for pound, no single person was as dangerous on the pre-modern battlefield as the fully-equipped knight on horseback.

This particular armor is one of the best in existence for clearly conveying the combination of utility and beauty of the knight’s equipment. The harness is truly a cap-à-pied armor – that is, one that covers from “head to foot”. Looking closely at the armpits and buttocks, you can see that even the gaps in the polished plate are filled with tightly-knit mail, so virtually the entire body would have been covered in metal. Even the eye-slit in the helmet is so narrow the armor’s face is practically robotic.

The metal itself is largely plain, polished brightly but not to a mirror shine, without any etching or brass attachment to alter the consistent gray color of the steel. (There is some very unobtrusive filework on the breastplate, gauntlets, and shoulder armor, but this blends with the natural shadows on the metal.) The only obvious decoration are the ridges called “flutes” hammered into many of the otherwise unadorned surfaces of the plate. Even this fluting is a structural element, however: it strengthens the piece against deforming when hit, so the metal can be thinner and lighter for the same effectiveness. The metal itself would, in Germany in the late 1400s, likely be heat-treated: the components placed in an oven before assembly to make the metal harder. Forget “Iron Man”; this is “High-Carbon Tempered German Steel Man”. This armor is a well-engineered tool designed to let the knight inside stay alive so he can cut down his enemies with the longsword that hangs from his left hip or smash their armor with the mace in his right hand.

The horse was the reason the knight was literally and figuratively above other soldiers in the Middle Ages; the mount was in that sense more important than the rider, and this horse’s armor is even grander than the man’s. The fluting is much more elaborate. A leering face, embossed in steel, gapes out from the horse’s chest armor (the peytral). The scalloped edges of the horse armor give a sense of serration, of a cutting edge.

The barding, as horse armor is called, is also every bit as tough as the knight’s harness. The plates are broader and generally thicker. The coverage is impressive, given the need to maintain the horse’s mobility. The spine behind the saddle has its own articulated protection, as does one set of the reins. Of course, it would be impossible to forget the six-inch long spike on the chamfron (the horse’s face armor). As a foot soldier in the Middle Ages, you might well see a knight charging at you: a couple hundred pounds of muscle and steel, lance or mace or sword in hand, sitting in the saddle on top of many more hundreds of pounds of muscle and steel, heading in your direction at about twenty miles an hour. And if you somehow get past the well-trained (and better-equipped) knight, you still have to fight an animal that can kill you with its face.

This armor is truly impressive, if not for its beauty then for the awe it inspires as a feat of human design. The goal of this design is not just to look tough but to be tough. Coming from the end of the fifteenth-century, this armor was made at the point before the proliferation of guns in medieval warfare began to make knightly armor less useful, so it is arguable it represents the apex of knightly protection. (This is probably why Edge and Paddock chose it for the cover of their classic book, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight.)

But this armor is not without its flaws. It is displayed (at the Royal Armouries, Leeds) equipped with a lance-rest on the breastplate (the curved bar under the right armpit) but without a lance to go with it. The barding is of one set, made all together for the same mount, but the man’s armor is actually a composite of several pieces of similar size and origin. More importantly, while seeing the horse and knight’s armors posed together helps our understanding of their symbiosis as a pre-modern weapons platform, it disguises the unique form of each.

Next time, then, we will look at an armor dismounted, brought down to eye level where we can appreciate it that much more.

Works Cited:

Edge, David and John Miles Paddock, Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight, New York: Crescent Books, 1996

Unless otherwise indicated, photos are copyright Stephanie Johnson 2010, all rights reserved.