The Helmet at the Head of Everything. 16th–18th-Century Martial Headwear from East and West from the Collection of the State Hermitage

The State Hermitage is continuing to present to the public examples of arms and armour that were collected by Russian Emperors Nicholas I and Alexander II in the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal. This exhibition is the seventh display in this format organized by the Hermitage and the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Preserve and is this time devoted to one of the most important elements of protective armour – the helmet.

The first metal helmets, made of copper, made their appearance in ancient Mesopotamia around 4,500 years ago. Later, people began to make them from iron and steel. The design of helmets changed over time under the influence of the evolution of weapons and military science, technology and the armourer’s artistic craft.

As a principal part of a complete set of defensive equipment, helmets were naturally of interest to collectors specializing in arms and armour. The geographical and chronological range of the acquisitions was extremely broad – the headwear of warriors from the lands of the Ancient World, mediaeval tournament and battlefield helmets made in Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Turkey, Iran and India, fighting men’s head protection from the modern era. Among the various types of arms and armour that came into the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal, there was a considerable amount of protective headgear, both pieces unearthed during archaeological excavations and those acquired from sales and auctions, as well as gifts from members of the imperial family, diplomats and fellow collectors. Some also arrived as military trophies.

The exhibition contains five unique pieces of protective headwear, representing the diversity in the traditions governing the creation of helmets in Europe, the countries of the Islamic world and Russia – those regions whose arms and armour exerted such a fascination for the crowned collectors. Featured in the display are: a tournament helmet made in the workshop of the celebrated Missaglia family of Milanese armourers around the year 1500; a parade helmet solid-forged by the German master craftsman Matthias Frauenpreiss (active 1550–1604); a Turkish turban helmet from the second half of the 15th or 16th century, and an 18th-century Indian helmet. A special place is taken by a shishak helmet created in the mid-1600s by the craftsmen of the Armoury Chamber in Moscow.

The exhibition has been prepared by the “Armoury” Department of the State Hermitage (headed by Dmitry Vladimirovich Liubin). The curator is Vsevolod Nikolayevich Obraztsov, a researcher in that department.

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More about the exhibition

The shape, structural characteristics and decoration of a helmet – a principal part of a complete set of defensive equipment – tell of its purpose and about where, when and by whom it was created. A helmet was a necessity for both an ordinary soldier and an aristocratic knight. On the battlefield, it performed a purely practical function, being expected to provide reliable and comfortable protection, while the martial headwear for tournaments and parades was made in keeping with the artistic style of the period and the owner’s pocket, affirming his social status.

The tournament helmet (Missaglia workshop, Milan, Italy, circa 1500) is the earliest piece included in the exhibition. Headwear of this sort became known as “frog-mouth helmets”, and they were an element of the special suits of jousting armour known by the German term Stechzeug that emerged in the late 15th century and were mainly produced in Germany and Italy. The lower part of the helmet reliably shielded the face from throat to eyes, as well as the back of the head and neck. The upper part was greatly flattened, while the front projected strongly forwards. Consequently, if an opponent’s lance struck the helmet during a joust, it could not cause much damage, while to protect his head from striking the inner walls of the helmet a knight would wear a thick balaclava-like hood made of ticking padded with felt.

The solid-forged parade helmet (made by Matthias Frauenpreiss (active 1550–1604), Augsburg(?), Germany) is not only a classic example of perfection in design for its time, but also a true work of the armourer’s art. Although this was a piece of ceremonial armour, it could also have been used for tournaments since it has the traditional construction for the period allowing the face to be completely shielded from the blows of a lance or edged weapon.

The turban helmet (Ottoman-era Turkey, second half of the 15th –16th century) is an eye-catching piece. The turban helmet in its classical form evolved in the area of north-western Iran around the mid-1400s, and until the beginning of the following century it remained the commonest type of martial headwear among not only the Ottomans, but also other peoples of the Middle Eastern region. The modern-day name for this style of helmet comes from its outward appearance – its significant size and spiral fluting imitate cloth turbans. Furthermore, the dimensions tend to suggest that an actual turban was worn beneath it, which would not only provide greater shock-absorption, but also protect the wearer from heatstroke.

The 18th-century Indian helmet belongs to a type of hemispherical headgear widely used in the Middle East. The finial on its top takes the form of a spearhead and actually has sharpened edges, The upper end of the sliding noseguard is finished in the form of an aigrette – a plumed ornament on a turban (or the like) that served as a badge of high social status. Such an adornment indicates that the suit of armour as a whole and its individual parts were perceived as ceremonial clothing.

The shishak helmet (Armoury Chamber, Moscow, Russia, mid-17th century) occupies a special place in the exhibition and represents a Russian reproduction of one of the Turkish types of headwear – the shishak, a typical feature of Muscovite armourers’ output in the 16th and 17th centuries. The narrow band of silver at the lower edge of the crown carries a series of nielloed letters – Sh.K.M.M.T.R. The distinguished historian and collector of antiquities Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin (1744–1817), who made a gift of the helmet to his friend Alexei Olenin, Director of the Public Library and President of the Academy of Arts, suggested that the letters stood for “Shishak of Prince [Kniaz’] Mikhail Mikhailovich Temkin-Rostovsky”. The Prince, an official at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, took part in the Russo-Polish War in 1654, and then accompanied the Tsar on his campaign against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Olenin showed the helmet to the artist Orest Kiprensky, who was working on his painting of Dmitry Donskoi on Kulikovo Field. The cheekpiece of the helmet lying at Prince Dmitry’s feet in that work precisely reproduces the corresponding part of this original. A few years later, Prince Temkin-Rostovsky’s helmet performed another role of honour, serving as a model for the eminent architect and graphic artist Ivan Alexeyevich Ivanov (1780–1848) when he produced the frontispiece for the first edition of Pushkin’s epic poem Ruslan and Ludmila from a sketch made by Olenin. The lower part of the engraving contained a depiction of the head of the giant Brother Chernomor wearing a helmet that can readily be identified as Prince Temkin-Rostovsky’s shishak.

The exhibition is accompanied by a Russian-language booklet – Shlem vsemu golova. Boevye nagolov’ia Vostoka i Zapada XVI – XVIII vekov iz kollektsii Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha. The texts are by Yury Georgiyevich Yefimov, head of the Weaponry Sector of the State Hermitage’s “Arsenal” Department, and Vsevolod Nikolayevich Obraztsov, a researcher in that department.