Details

Object type

breastplate; kastenbrust

Place Associated

Europe (place of manufacture)

Date

15th century

Materials

steel

Description

This is a cuirass (breast- and backplate) with a fauld (plate skirt). It is of a distinctly German style known as a kastenbrust meaning ‘box-breast’. This type of body protection is frequently depicted in artwork from German-speaking parts of Europe, most notably Conrad Witz’s altarpiece in Basle of 1435 and the 1432 altarpiece by Jan van Eyck in Ghent.

Deep ridges emanate from the base of the breastplate to create for a beautiful decorative impact. Sharp, even angular, forms were a popular style amongst the German soldiery when it came to armour. A clever pin-and-staple attachment allows the wearer to don the cuirass with or without its fauld. For many years this example, which is one of only a very few surviving, was assumed to be a fake. A recent metallurgraphic study, however, has shown this assumption to be completely wrong.

German armourers used the best ores to create the toughest steels. A Spanish fight master, based in northern Italy, wrote about the properties of armour in the 1460s:

"if you want to combine lightness with security, then you must obtain the best possible iron and steel which was originally to be found in Innsbruck in Germany, where the masters tested their products with bolts from the crossbow. Indeed, they made such excellent steel that they even considered making their breastplates resistant to the arquebus – a type of small cannon!"

In 1387, a pourpoint (padded doublet worn beneath armour) was sent to Germany as a pattern for a steel torso defence for a fifteen-year-old French duke. This same duke was pulled alive from a pile of corpses after the battle of Agincourt in 1415 – his good quality cuirass had not only protected him from English arrows, it had also prevented him from suffocating to death!

Credit Line/Donor

Purchased with grant aid from the National Fund for Acquisitions, 1981

ID Number

A.1981.40.a

Location

In storage