Left Arm Elements from a Boy's Armor (Lower Cannon, Couter, Rerebrace) (c. 1560 (some modern)): Art, History and Details

Left Arm Elements from a Boy's Armor (Lower Cannon, Couter, Rerebrace) (c. 1560 (some modern)) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

These elements once belonged to a full suit of armor that would have been made for a young boy. Decorated with etching, embossing, and gilding, the original suit would have been impressive. Dressing your sons in small custom suits of armor was popular with the wealthiest nobles. They would have been worn for parades and ceremonial occasions and once outgrown were often kept as mementos. Made for the left arm, the rerebrace or upper cannon protected the upper arm, the couter the elbow, and the lower cannon the forearm.

Object facts

• Title: Left Arm Elements from a Boy's Armor (Lower Cannon, Couter, Rerebrace)
• Date: c. 1560 (some modern)
• Culture: Germany, Augsburg
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: etched and lightly embossed steel with traces of gilding, leather
• Dimensions: Overall: 17 cm (6 11/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.708

A detail from the museum

Small-scale suits of armor would help prepare a young boy for knighthood.

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.