Elements from an Armor (c. 1540–70): Art, History and Details

Elements from an Armor (c. 1540–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A full suit of armor comprises over a dozen different pieces. Here there are several elements including a burgonet, a gorget, pauldrons, and a breastplate. Popular throughout the 1500s and 1600s, the burgonet was a light, open headpiece favored by cavalry and infantry alike. Its main features are a peak over the eyes and hinged cheekpieces that fasten with a strap or lace under the chin. A gorget is an element of armor that protects the neck, throat, and upper part of the chest. It normally consists of two parts, front and back, joined by a hinge on the left shoulder and fastened with a stud on the right. A pauldron is a component of plate armor that covers the shoulder and often the armpit, and parts of the back and chest as well. The breastplate is an element that protects the chest and abdomen and is normally worn with a backplate.

Object facts

• Title: Elements from an Armor
• Date: c. 1540–70
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel, leather bands; steel; steel and leather
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1804

A detail from the museum

Although all these elements were accessioned together, they are not from the same original suit.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of Arms and Armour. [Boston, Massachusetts]: [Frank Gair Macomber], 1900.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Helen Ives Gilchrist. Handbook of the Severance Collection of Arms and Armor. Cleveland, O.: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.