The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

The Hermitage Arsenal’s collection of defensive armour is the best in Russia and one of the best in the world. Its range is fairly broad and gives a good picture of development in this field from the 14th century to the 18th in Western Europe, Russia and the countries of the East. One of the most significant and complete sections of the collection is the selection of European helmets dating from the 15th to 17th centuries.

The helmet was the main element in defensive armour. It protected the most important and most vulnerable part of the body and was vital to both the simple foot-soldier and the aristocratic knight. The shape of a helmet, its constructional features and decoration may indicate for whom it was intended, the date and place of manufacture and, often, the name of the craftsman. On the battlefield the purely practical functions of the helmet were required: it needed to provide reliable and convenient protection to the fighting man. The headgear worn for tournaments and parades, on the other hand, were decorated in keeping with the artistic tastes of the time and the purse of the owner, as a token of his social status.

The stocks of European helmets in the Hermitage Arsenal number some 300 items. Many of them are of considerable interest as true products of the armourers’ art. They were produced by the best craftsmen in Germany, Italy, Austria, France, Spain, Holland, Poland and other countries. The German section of the collection is the most significant. German artisans - smiths, founders, chasers and engravers - produced many first-class weapons and elevated their craft to the level of high art. The talented masters of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Dresden made armour and helmets to go with them, using all known metal-working techniques - forging, polishing, embossing, cutting, engraving and gilding. You can see this for yourself by examining the works of such craftsmen as Matthaus Frauenpreis and Anton Peffenhauser.

The craftsmen of Italy, and especially Milan, were no less skilled. They reached perfection in the production of parade and tournament armour, employing the techniques of chasing, damascening and gilding. Their finest works were valued no less highly than the painted canvases of the great Renaissance artists, while the names of Filippo Negroli and Lucio Piccinino were no less well known than Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo. As in other forms of art in the 16th century, arms and armour, including helmets, were decorated with plant ornament, depictions of fantastic beasts and people, as well as subjects from ancient mythology and ancient history.

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