From 15 May 2024, the exhibition “ ‘Costume Armour’ of the Sorrowful Knight from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum” will be running in the Arsenal pavilion of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve.
The exhibition is a continuation of the joint work of the Hermitage and the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Preserve to display items of equipment and weaponry that were collected by the Russian emperors and once kept in the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal. This one, the eighth in the series, presents a 16th-century suit of plate armour made for the foot tournaments that increased in popularity among the aristocracy at the beginning of that century.
The panoply (complete suit of armour) featured in the exhibition is interesting not only for its original construction and decoration, but also for the curious history of its time in Russia. Among fighting men in the first decades of the 16th century, there was a tremendous vogue for flamboyant clothing with puffs and slashes that combined a variety of colours and textures. They included the well-known style of costume sported by Landsknechte, mercenary soldiers who fought in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The fashion really took off, and among the armour from this period it is possible to find an imitation of elements also found in non-military male attire – padded rolls with slashes, puffs, pleats and so on.
Those are the very things that can be seen on the exhibit from the present-day Hermitage collection that came into its imperial forerunner from the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal. It is an example of what is known as costume armour –one of a relatively small group decorated in imitation of elements of male dress of the period.
The panoply was made for use in the foot tournaments that had gained popularity in the early 1500s. Changes in the art of warfare and an increasing role for the infantry on the battlefield led to a vogue for fighting off horseback among the aristocracy. One of the main tactics in combat on foot was stabbing moves against exposed parts of the body. Armourers made every effort to make their suits as safe as possible. In the Hermitage example, the elbow joints and armpits that were customarily protected with chainmail are covered by plates of metal. Additionally, this suit has a unique construction of the shoulders for which we know of no direct parallel. The presence of sockets to mount a lance rest on the breastplate suggest that the panoply had additional parts allowing it to also be used for tournaments on horseback.
The foremost specialists producing “costume armour” are justly considered to have been Conrad Seusenhofer of Innsbruck and Kolman Helmschmied of Augsburg. It is very tempting to attribute this exhibit to one of them, but the panoply is, however, most unlikely to have been a work of those master craftsmen. There is no truth either behind the attribution current until recently that numbered the suit among the creations of the armourer Hans Rabeiler. Most probably the Hermitage armour was produced in north Germany in imitation of Seusenhofer’s works during the first quarter of the 16th century. Precisely who it was made by and for whom remains unknown at present, although the history of this suit’s time in Russia and its use here can be traced well and it is quite fascinating.
From entries in the catalogue of the Imperial Hermitage, we know that the suit was moved to the collection of the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal from the arms-and-armour collection of the “Memorable Hall” (precursor of the Artillery Museum) covered with black paint, which put it in need of restoration. That curious fact prompts the assumption that the suit may have been used to create the image of the Sorrowful Knight in funeral processions. The tradition of including Joyful and Sorrowful Knights in the obsequies of monarchs, and later of other major figures as well, had a long history in Russia going back to Peter the Great. A pair of suits of armour that were also in the collection of the Memorable Hall and took part in funeral processions in the 19th century is now in the regular display of the Arsenal pavilion. Research points to this panoply most probably having been worn by the Sorrowful Knight in the cortege for Peter the Great’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth, which is what led to it being painted black.
This unique item from the State Hermitage collection can be viewed at the Arsenal Pavilion of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve until 12 August 2024.
