January 25, 2000 - January 2001
Special Exhibition Gallery, Arms and Armor Galleries
The Metropolitan Museum will present European Helmets, 1450-1650: Treasures from the Reserve Collection, the third in a series of thematic installations drawn from the Museum's extraordinary collection of European headpieces, beginning January 25, 2000. Featuring some 70 helmets, many of them to go on display for the first time, the exhibition will explore the evolution, technology, form, and fashion of European head defense over two centuries. The majority of the helmets have rarely been exhibited or published in the last 50 years and, therefore, constitute a collection virtually unknown to Museum visitors, scholars, and collectors.
In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European helmet design reached its apogee, with armorers creating steel headpieces of ingenious construction and powerful sculptural form. Whether intended for aristocratic mounted knights or humble infantrymen, helmets had to provide maximum defense for the most vital — and vulnerable — part of the body while offering reasonable comfort of wear with adequate sight and ventilation. The forging of a helmet was thus the armorer's greatest challenge and, very often, his finest achievement. A well-made helmet balances the practical function of defense with the aesthetics of line and mass.
The period of time covered by the exhibition marks the waning of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern era, when new tactics and improved weaponry revolutionized warfare and changed dramatically the look of helmets and body armor. The armorer was continually challenged to devise new defenses to compensate for the increasing use and accuracy of firearms, which became commonplace on the battlefield by the early 16th century. The armorer's expertise was equally in demand in times of peace, when martial sports — tournaments — required specialized helmets, to ensure the participants' safety. At the same time national and regional styles were becoming more clearly discernible, and Turkish influences in Eastern Europe inspired the adoption of oriental elements. Armor decoration also changed dramatically from the late medieval practice of covering plates with textile and metal appliqués to the creation of integral decoration, worked directly into the steel surfaces in the form of etching, embossing, and damascening.
Among the helmets on view will be a selection of rare 15th-century sallets worn by Italian and German knights; elaborately decorated parade helmets worn by the guards of Pier Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza (1525-1547, duke from 1545), and Pope Julius III (1487-1555, elected pope in 1550); sturdy tournament helmets made for use in the joust with blunt lances; and shot-proof siege helmets weighing more than 20 pounds. Although most helmets are unsigned and therefore anonymous, several can be attributed on the basis of their form or decoration to the leading armorers of the day, among them Kolman Helmschmid (1470-1532) of Augsburg and Kunz Lochner (ca. 1510-1567) of Nuremberg. Among the rediscovered treasures previously overlooked is a richly silvered and gilt helmet bearing the arms and devices of Vicenzo Gonzaga (1562-1612), duke of Mantua, a Milanese work of about 1587.
This exhibition complements the series of related helmets from this period on view in the Museum's Arms and Armor Galleries.
European Helmets, 1450-1650 is organized by Stuart W. Pyhrr, the Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Curator in the Department of Arms and Armor.
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November 10, 1999
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