Dear all,

Recently I've found the following painting by Francisco de Zurbarán (and workshop).
http://www.amis-musees-castres.asso.fr/GIF/Ph...itlara.jpg
This is a portrait of Alvar Velázquez de Lara located today in Musée Goya Castres, Tarn, France. The armour on the painting has been decorated with human (?) faces.

Is this decoration a part of an existing tradition? Was it well-known also outside of Spain?

I'll be very grateful for any help with the subject.

Best regards,
Alexander

Alexander, i've never seen the painting before so thanks for posting it. The method use to create an armour of this sort is called repousseing (sp) and involves using chisels and punches to work inside and outside a piece to create the shapes. When well executed the finished product can have such detail and shape that the metal appears almost plastic in nature. While there are 15th century examples this type of decoration really hit its peak in the mid to later 16th century in the Italian "a la Romanesque" parade armours typified by the work of the Negrolis. Lions heads and mythical cratures were popluar themes as were classical scenes and "trophy" dislplays (bunches of arms together usually random like pole arms and axes and swords and arquebuses ect) .

Alexander,
I've seen a shield with a face on it and armour with Jesus or Maria. I believe the Idea behind the latter one is, that the opponent hesitates to beat or stab on an image of god (sailors tatooed their back with jesus to prevent whipping).

I'll try to catch images, but I don't know in which book they have been.

Thomas

Dear Allan and Thomas,

Thank you very much for your answers.

Best regards,
Alexander

Take this over to the ArmourArchive(.org) There's still enough knowledgable people hanging around there to give you a much more complete answer than we can here.

Frankly, most of us are more interested in the "Arms" portions of our "Arms and Armor" hobby. ;)

If you're interested in the style, you should see Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries, reviewed here:

http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_books_team.html

You can link from the titles of these books to Amazon.com, where this book is just $29. It's a bargain.

One thing to note is that this kind of extensive embossing thins the steel to the point that it may no longer be suitable for combat. The most elaborate "heroic" armours of the period were strictly for parade-wear. Like gold-plated hammers, you might say.

The met has some al'antica on their website. Here is a link to a couple of helmets and a shield and on page 3 there is another shield.

http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewHig...amp;set=06

Had this picture as background for a long time, the burgonet was made by Filippo Negroli and is as the Met now.

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