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Reece Nelson
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 Posted: Thu 16 Jun, 2011 9:10 pm Post subject: Fiore Armour |
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I'v interested in learning what type of style the armour is that is depicted in the fight manuals by master Fiore de' Liberi.
The armour looks to resemble 15th century Milanese armour, but the time period of Fiore de' Liberi was between 1380-and 1410.
So what style of armour was this?
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Mackenzie Cosens
Location: Vancouver Canada Joined: 08 Aug 2007
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 12:33 am Post subject: |
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There are a bunch of different types from bascinet to proto (or not so proto) armet, white armour with large complex pauldrons to I believe maile shirt. The various documents of the Fiore tradition contain a wondrously interesting collections of images of armour of various kinds.
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 8:19 am Post subject: |
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The Novati edition of the Pisani Dossi MS seems to depict Northern Italian armour and clothing at the end of the first or early in the second quarter of the 15thC. For example this effigy in the Louvre:
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Effigy of Neapolitan knight Marino di Giovanni Cossa, who died Oct 28, 1418.
Last edited by Kel Rekuta on Fri 17 Jun, 2011 8:31 am; edited 1 time in total
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 8:29 am Post subject: |
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Or the knightly statue of Orlando, representing Dubrovnik, depicted in Northern Italian (Venician) armour.
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Ben van Koert
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 10:01 am Post subject: |
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I've always thought the Fiore depictions have a striking resemblance to the Churburg S18 armour:
Thank you for posting the Louve photo Kel, It really shows the typical low plackart really well.
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Reece Nelson
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 10:04 am Post subject: Fiore Armour |
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Very interesting! Im really curious about the type of helms they are using. To me it looks similar to the shape of a great bascinet, minus the visor 
But then the plates below show the same shape of helm with a big face visor attached (which looks to have a mesh type of pattern, like in fencing masks )
Any examples of these helms?
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pig face style
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open faced
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 11:40 am Post subject: |
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As no grill visors for bascinets have survived, we are left to speculate on the construction of the helmets in the first image. They could be artistic convention in period, they might be copyist error in the Novati facsimile. Until the P-D family allows another scholar access to the MS, we can't know.
There were barred visors on recycled bascinets for Gioco dei Ponte. Some survive but are of unknown reconstruction date. Making a conical visor out of bars seems really tedious but maybe it was a thing done for friendly play with axes. Who knows? I am currently of the opinion that plate is badly copied from the original MS.
Reece, what you see in the Novati edition of the PD MS are figures depicting the cusp of the transition from bascinets to armets. Early armets seem to have been visorless. This fresco, definitively dated between 1407 and 1411 shows visorless and visored armets.
(Detail of the Execution of Rhea Silvia from Romulus and Remus Fresco Painting in Palazzo Trinci)
Bascinets of various forms were still very common outside Italy until well into the second quarter of the 15thC, when the grand bascinet is seen more frequently. Nothing hard and fast about the evolution of armour, many forms of harness co-existed in any given period.
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Hugh Knight
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 1:14 pm Post subject: Re: Fiore Armour |
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| Reece Nelson wrote: | Very interesting! Im really curious about the type of helms they are using. To me it looks similar to the shape of a great bascinet, minus the visor
But then the plates below show the same shape of helm with a big face visor attached (which looks to have a mesh type of pattern, like in fencing masks )
Any examples of these helms? |
A regular (not great) bascinet wouldn't be that surprising at 1410.
As for the visor, I'm of the opinion that these are grilled visors like the SCA uses. We know of at least one painting that might depict a grilled visor (that alter piece with the sketchy grill up in the air--I forget the reference offhand and my books are packed still) already. My supposition is that these are training visors meant to protect the face while allowing a mostly open-faced fighting experience. If you notice, many lethal fights are done with the visor lifted up or not worn--look at the armets in the other Fiore plates which don't appear to have visors at all, or the Talhoffer 1467 Harnischfechten plates with the visors lifted up (and then there's Jack de Lalain who appears to have fought without one even in non-lethal Arms). In training, however, doing this is very dangerous--any lucky shot can nail you while you're just practicing. But you don't want to practice with a closed visor if you're going to fight for real without a visor, so this allows the best of both worlds.
It's also possible these are just artistic error. I don't personally think so because this doesn't seem like the way in which an artist would screw up--this is too specific a thing. Still, it *is* possible, and we can't know for sure until we get a better look at the original.
Regards,
Hugh
www.schlachtschule.org
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Mackenzie Cosens
Location: Vancouver Canada Joined: 08 Aug 2007
Posts: 238
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 2:35 pm Post subject: Re: Fiore Armour |
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| Hugh Knight wrote: | ...
As for the visor, I'm of the opinion that these are grilled visors like the SCA uses. We know of at least one painting that might depict a grilled visor (that alter piece with the sketchy grill up in the air--I forget the reference offhand and my books are packed still) already... |
Is this the image Hugh? sorry I "got it on the Internet" so I don't have better documentation then it looks to me to be late 14th C early 15th C east European??? .
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Hugh Knight
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 5:35 pm Post subject: Re: Fiore Armour |
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| Mackenzie Cosens wrote: | | Is this the image Hugh? sorry I "got it on the Internet" so I don't have better documentation then it looks to me to be late 14th C early 15th C east European??? . |
Yup, that's the one. Bear in mind, however, that some of the experts to whom I've spoken aren't sure we can accept that image at face value--it could be meant to show a "foreign" harness of some sort, and so be a fantasy on the part of the artist. I don't think so from looking at it because too much else rings true, but it's hardly perfect documentation, so take it with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, there are other pictures of grilled visors in other paintings--I've attached one from a 15th-century German painting. If you look at the "V" shaped space between the ladder and the cross you can see three helmets, and two of them *clearly* have grilled visors.
I've seen a few others, too, although I don't have them on my computer.
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Regards,
Hugh
www.schlachtschule.org
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Hugh Knight
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| Posted: Fri 17 Jun, 2011 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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By the way, I have another picture that really reminds me of the Fiore armor with the armet. In the picture attached below you can even see the same weird "hooped" plates/aventail? around the neck. The helmet is somewhat crudely painted, but I believe it's essentially the same sort of open-faced armet shown in Fiore.
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[ Download ]
Regards,
Hugh
www.schlachtschule.org
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Iagoba Ferreira
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| Posted: Thu 30 Jun, 2011 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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Roel Renmans, helpful as usual...
1380-1385 - 'Třeboň-altarpiece, resurrection' (Master of the Třeboň-altarpiece), Praha, Klášter sv. Anežky České, Praha, Czech Republic
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Charlton Miller
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Joined: 07 Mar 2010
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Thu 30 Jun, 2011 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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I found this image posted at the following link (with other interesting images too: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/06/book-of-knighthood.html)
It appears to be a pretty clear example of a barred visor from a 1460 manuscript called the Book of Knighthood... Slightly later period than the de' Liberi illustrations, and probably not attempting to represent the same type of headgear as your example either, but hopefully it's still helpful.
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This is a standard topic