Gothic Backplate (c. 1475–1500): Art, History and Details

Gothic Backplate (c. 1475–1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Over time the increasing effectiveness of the crossbow and longbow made steel plates necessary for protection. Around 1400 a knight was protected almost entirely by plate armor. The elements shown here (backplate and fan-shaped pauldrons), with their sculptural line, illustrate the beauty of plate armor from the Gothic age.

Object facts

• Title: Gothic Backplate
• Date: c. 1475–1500
• Culture: Germany, late 15th Century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel, modern leather straps
• Dimensions: Overall: 44.5 x 34.5 x 16.5 cm (17 1/2 x 13 9/16 x 6 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1613

A detail from the museum

This armor would have been polished mirror bright and been a spectacular sight in the sunlight.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Helen Ives Gilchrist. Handbook of the Severance Collection of Arms and Armor. 2d ed., 1948.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms & Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

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.