[Ben P.]

The title says it all

How effective was it?

How did it perform?

What advantages did it over regular plate/what advantages did regular plate have over it?

How widely was it adopted?

Do we have any accounts that talk about it?

P.S please tell me anything else you think is worth sharing about anima armour

[P. Cha]

The main advantage of armor like that over solid plates is that it uses smaller sized plates. Remember that in the old days, getting large sizes of plates was hard so smaller the plates, the easier it is.

[Dan Howard]

By the time anima/anime plate armour was developed, the size of the plates wasn't an issue. Solid breastplates were being produced en-masse because of blast furnaceas and trip-hammer mills. IMO it had more to do with a Renaissance attempt to replicate Roman "segmentata". Apart from a little more flexibility it has no advantages over regular plate harness but it is more complicated, making articulation more difficult. It may simply have been a means of showing off the skill of the armourer.

[Helge B.]

There are two videos on youtube which show very good the flexibility of an anime breastplate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eLgzcAKmW4&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL45r2AEPkE&NR=1

I wonder why anime breastplates were not more common in western europe in the 17th century as they were in Poland. Most cuirassier breastplates I saw so far were made of one piece.

[Dan Howard]

[Jonathan Atkin]

Do you have anymore examples of anima armour? I have never seen the like! I find it very appealing in the aesthetic department. Do you know when these would first start appearing Dan?

[Dan Howard]

I think it first appeared in the 16th century. It was more popular in Eastern Europe than Western Europe.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons...ima%27.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons...agment.jpg
http://swordmaiden.com/wp-content/uploads/eichlinghussar.jpg

[Nathan Robinson]

See attached.

Italian anima/anime amour, sixteenth century.

[Jonathan Atkin]

That is beautiful! Wow thanks guys, that's truly amazing.

[Gregory J. Liebau]

(EDIT: Note, the information below presented an argument about the immobility of anime armour. The research was done one evening without particular details taken into account, and is not considered by the author to be fully accurate. Please scroll down in the thread for more information regarding the articulation of the lower lames of the cuirass and cited examples.)

I would agree with Dan that the purpose of the anime/anima (interchangeable) cuirass would primarily be aesthetic appeal. I've seen some examples in Austria, and although I haven't touched them I want to say that there is little to no flexibility in this armour (generally). Unless the rivets are not solidly peened and the lower section of each lame has a slotted hole, there is no allowance for movement between the plates. One of the Polish examples that Dan posted an image of does in fact have these characteristics, but it dates to the early-mid 1600s, over half a century after the Italians began to popularize the style.

The main giveaway for the immobility of the lames, without having had the luxury of seeing the construction from the inside, is the use of solid, un-collapsable borders around the arm slots in the cuirasses. This can be seen plainly on the exposed cuirass from the Zeughaus, on the Kunsthistorisches example and that of Henry VIII, all pictured below.

This style of armour first appears in Italy in the first half of the 16th century. A high quality example attributed to artist Caremolo Modrone, dating to 1540, has all of the appropriate characteristics of anime armour. Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance has an image of the inside of this breastplate on page 262. The rivets are solidly peened and no mobility is allowed. It also has the solid borders separately attached, as seen on the mentioned examples below. Greenwich harnesses from England use Anime cuirasses as early as a decade after the style took off in Italy, looking at the garniture of Sir William Hebert, completed in 1557. I've posted French cavalry examples, although I cannot be certain of their origin as I haven't been to the Musee de L'Armee myself and just have the images.

So although the style originated in Italy it was certainly not unpopular in the west. On the contrary, it was very stylish and picked up rather quickly, as armour development across the regions goes. Such wonderful aspects as repousse work (pioneered by the Negroli's and other Italian artists in the 1530s) never even saw use in Western European workshops.

Without further explanation, here are some 16th century anime cuirasses. The only image here I can take credit for as being my own photograph is that from the Kunsthistorisches, and I didn't crop it yet!

Two examples from the Zeughaus in Graz, Austria. These are munitions style armours.





The next is from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.



The next two are half harnesses housed in the Musee de L'Armee in Paris, France.





And finally a very early, Italian made example from 1544. This is a personal field harness that was commissioned for Henry VIII before his final campaign into France. It his housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, USA.



Cheers!

-Gregory

[Matthew Fedele]

[Vincent C]

I have to agree that something like this would be much more a show of wealth and not battle function.

If you were rich why not flaunt it by showing you could pay a smith however much money to get this kind of armor? and the richer you were the more you could embellish the edges of all segments, the one suit looks like it has brass/gold fittings on the edges, where as the other looks as if the edges were shaped to create sort of floral or leaf designed.

Being rich, this also had the added plus of if it was ever damaged in a fight, you could pay to just have that one segment repaired instead of the entire breastplate. So instead of having your entire plate ruined and needing re-forging, you'd only need to replace a destroyed piece.

Personally I think this kind of armour does look quite good, even if the style is completely unnecessary.

But then again, almost all embellishment is.

[Romulus Stoica]

You have to keep in mind that armor is related to the weapons used in that period and location. In Eastern Europe the main weapon of those days was the sabre and not the sword. The use of sabre require more flexibility and a flexible light armor as the anime breastplate was a bonus. The main enemy of the period were the turks, they also used light flexible armor like yushman or kolontar mail and plates armor types.

[Dan Howard]

The type of weapon is irrelevant. If Greg is right that most anime cuirasses do not articulate in the chest area, there would be no difference between the flexibility of this armour and a regular harness. This style seems to be nothing but a fashion statement with no practical purpose at all. Note that at this time in Europe, the cost of the raw material is quite low compared to the total cost of the armour. There would be little difference between the cost of materials for a regular harness and the materials for an anime harness and I'm willing to bet that the final cost of the latter would have been higher than the former.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Gregory J. Liebau]

Ah, ha! Last night as I focused so much on putting the images up, I almost didn't take the time to think about differences between the upper and lower lame attachment method. While thinking this morning, I realized that the lowest lames may well have articulated on most, if not all of these specimens even while I was sure the lames over the ribcage were solidly constructed.

So, going back to explore... On page 169 of Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance, a faux anime cuirass is shown from the inside. The two lowest lames are attached using solidly peened rivets through leather strapping from the center, with slider rivets on the outside edges. These are thus moving lames. Another piece on page 175 has the same qualities. Again on page 201. Many more examples throughout (doh)... Totally didn't take that into account last night. So, the earliest anime cuirasses from the Italian shops in the 1540s all had articulated lower lames to serve a wearer as they sat or bent over.

Many cuirasses in the Zeughaus are only "half" anime, with the upper portion solid, as shown on those Hussar pieces earlier in the thread. This would make sense, since only the lowest lames need to articulate, as Jean pointed out.

So I would like to re-conclude, specifically, that a majority of anime cuirasses had articulated lames below the chest, perhaps only two-three lames from the fauld, in order to allow some extra mobility for the wearer. This is obviously advantageous over a solid cuirass design because it allows flexibility to the wearer, and is probably one of the main prompts for the construction of this style of armour en masse, such as the many munitions examples present at the Zeughaus in Austria. These are hardened, military pieces not made with stylization in mind, but functionality. The thickness and quality of the steel, the protection afforded by the design and any other points of contention are most likely moot... There is no additional coverage or significance in the design from a practical point of view other than the mobility. The argument about sabers does not make sense, especially as a majority of cuirasses were still single-piece breastplate designs throughout the late 16th century and many Westerners who wore them would never even see a saber. This was also not "light" armour. Because of the extra overlap in the plates and the addition of rivets and strapping sections as well as reinforced arm cutouts, your typical anime armour probably outweighed it's single piece cousin.

Off to class!

[P. Cha]

Humm I didn't realize that anima armor was as late period as that. Okay remend that theory of smaller pates to thinner ones maybe? thinner overlapping plates could be easier to make then thicker solid plates maybe? I'm just making guesses at this point as I am less familiar with what they had available as far as steel technology went in that era. Or maybe for just look as already mentioned repeatedly. I really don't see the anima armor providing that much more flexibility over a well fitted solid plate armor though. Most of the articulation seems useless.

[Nathan Robinson]

I was just browsing through some of the photos on the myArmoury.com server and found these already on there that I previously scanned for another topic:

[Gregory J. Liebau]

Thanks for posting those, Nathan. I'd like to note that the third image you've got there is the same cuirass as the one I photographed in Vienna. I'm glad I get to see that picture of it, as it is far more detailed than the frame I captured! The second picture you posted is the armour of Carlo Gonzaga, made in 1540 or so by Caremolo Modrone. That is the first piece I referenced in my second post, and also happens to be my favorite anime armour.

-Gregory

[Adam D. Kent-Isaac]

This should be promoted to a spotlight topic...those pictures are unbelievable. Thanks Nathan!