Gorget (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Gorget (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

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. Gradually the gorget grew smaller and more symbolic becoming a symbol of rank. By the 1700s it became a single crescent shape worn on a chain that suspended the gorget even lower on the chest, so that it no longer protected the throat in normal wear.

Object facts

• Title: Gorget
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel
• Dimensions: Overall: 31.6 x 25.2 x 17.2 cm (12 7/16 x 9 15/16 x 6 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1639

A detail from the museum

This gorget has a guild mark from Nuremburg, which functioned as a seal of quality.

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.
• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• 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.