Gothic Breastplate (late 1400s): Art, History and Details

Gothic Breastplate (late 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This elegantly constructed breastplate consists of two primary plates of steel fastened at center by a rivet. The lower plate is embellished with a border of embossed flutes that converge upward and terminate in a fleur-de-lys. The pair of rivet holes in the upper right breast accommodated a lance rest, now lost.

Object facts

• Title: Gothic Breastplate
• Date: late 1400s
• Culture: South Germany or Austria, Innsbruck, late 15th century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel
• Dimensions: Overall: 53.2 x 35.2 x 16.3 cm (20 15/16 x 13 7/8 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1720

A detail from the museum

As a result of the introduction of plate armor, the shield became superfluous and gradually disappeared from use.

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 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.