The “Lion Armor”

Italian or French, 1545-1555

Image copyright Pyhrr and Godoy

In sixteenth-century Europe, the approach of the Modern age was felt by the landed gentry as a rotting of the teeth and a wheeze of the breath. The ruling class of the Middle Ages was now middle-aged itself, finding that the dashing clothes it wore in its youth no longer fit and besides they were out of style. The secure life their predecessors bought for them – at the cost of hundreds of years of internecine warfare – came with an unexpected irrelevance and impotence. To combat this, the upper class looked to ally itself with the celebrated, almost mythical past – as the ancient Romans had, as the contemporary medievalist (like the author) does. Renaissance classicism glorified the ancients for their accomplishments and, by implication, glorified their descendents as well. Michelangelo’s “David” (referencing ancient Greek sculpture) and his design for Saint Peter’s Basilica (recalling ancient Roman architecture) were an early, roundabout form of conspicuous consumption.

Though painting, architecture, and sculpture were the primary venues for classicist works, the military world was affected as well. In the 1500s, the knight – expensive to train and arm, an emblem of upper class superiority – was increasingly lame as a fighting unit. The Battle of Pavia in 1525, where around 1,500 conscripts with matchlock guns demolished a force of French cavalry four times as large, clearly demonstrated that cheap, mass units of foot soldiers with impersonal weapons like guns and pikes, allied with capitalistic mercenary groups, could make paragons of chivalry feel sharply the cramping of weak muscles and creaking in aged joints. But Renaissance armorers could also tap into that weakness and supersede it with a style called “all’antica”: armor made “in the antique mode”.

Image copyright Pyhrr and Godoy

The Lion Armor is a beautiful piece of art; that much is plain. Even as a symbol of social decay, it is among the finest full harnesses extant (now in the Royal Armouries, Leeds). The rounded shapes of the sixteenth-century Italian style reveal the silhouette, which is that of a slim man, roughly six feet tall, not likely more than 200 pounds. The smooth surfaces have been etched and gilt, the designs creeping vines of gold on the dark background of the metal, which has otherwise been left unpolished or “rough from the hammer”. All the edges have been rolled and chiseled to emulate the look of rope, including the edges of the visor of the close helmet, which is pierced in a circular, solar pattern.

The pride of the suit is the embossing, in the form of eleven growling lion’s heads – as old a Classical image of martial prowess as there is – on the toe caps, knees, gauntlet cuffs, elbows, shoulders, and crown of the helmet. These have been hammered out of plates of steel which would have begun as thicker than the surrounding pieces, because the embossing would drastically thin the metal, a danger for an armor worn in combat. (And the Lion Armor did see combat, probably in a tournament: there are sword-cuts on the left side of the visor.) The fluting seen in German Gothic armors proved that craftsmen could sculpt the steel with simple lines to add both beauty and strength. In the Lion Armor, that sculpture is purely decorative, yet still integrated into fighting harness, both beautiful and effective.

The Lion Armor, then, is a successful work of fantasy-come-true. It is as remarkable a work of art as it is a functional tool of war, made for a man more likely a wannabe than a warrior. The decoration of this armor proclaims life and power: the etching, reminiscent of plant life; the gilding, bright yellow like the sunlight superseding the dun steel; the ferocious lions in positions of strength, guiding the hands, feet, and head of the wearer, calling back to the lion skin of the indomitable Heracles. A man in this armor is donning a myth, adopting a persona in the hope that it makes for a brighter future.

Next time, the armor we look at will make a darker prediction, and one that actually came true.

Works Cited:

Pyhrr, Stuart W. and Jose A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1998, New York