[Thomas Dietrich]

Hello everyone!

I have a question regarding the interaction between plackart and breastplate on german gothic harnesses (ex: the sigismund cuirasse).

According to Toby Capwells book the strap-and-buckle connection between breastplate and cuirasse on english harnesses provides a great range of movement, both lateral and rotational.
Yet when I look at german gothic harnesses, the placart seems to be riveted solidly onto the breastplate.
This leaves two possibilities for me:

1.: They are indeed riveted solidly together and the only movement is provided by the good fit into the natural waist of the wearer.
This seems counterintuitive to me, as it would severly reduce the range of movement and would negate the necessity of a breastplate/plackart construction in the first place, a solid breastplate with added tassets would function identicaly.

2.:The connecting rivet on the breastplate (and the one on the backplate) is set loose and functions like an axle.
The breastplate pivots on an imaginary axis between these two rivets, wich would provide lateral movement between breastplate and plackart.

both options would not provide any rotational movement of the upper body between breastplate and plackart.

could anyone elaborate on this topic? It seems weird to me, as if I am missing something entirely.

Cheers

Thomas

[Andreas Bornmann]

Hello Thomas,
your second assumption about the sliding rivets is correct.
Have a look at this breastplates backside:
http://stgeorgearmoury.co.uk/mediac/400_0/med...G_1712.JPG

This construction might be less flexible than the strap+buckle construction (Italian style, widespread all over europe as "export armour"), but I guess it is also more rigit and a less heavy curass, since there is less overlap with the gothic style than with the italian style.

Greetings
Andreas

[Thomas Dietrich]

Andreas,

thank you very much! I hadn´t thought about rivets on the sides as well, but it seems to provide additional guidance and structural strength. Thanks for the picture! It has helped imensely!

Now I´ll try to work through Golls thesis and try to find evidence like this on extant examples.

Cheers

Thomas

[William Knight]

We see both sliding rivets and fixed rivets on surviving examples of German two-piece breastplates and Italian-made 'Alla Tedesca' breastplates. I have personally handled this breastplate - https://worcester.emuseum.com/objects/50304/breastplate-with-placard and it indeed has no sliding rivet nor a slot for one (it seems like the plackart was actually repositioned at some point - there are two rivet holes). You can see this here: https://worcester.emuseum.com/internal/media/dispatcher/44895/resize%3Aformat%3Dfull

At the same time other surviving examples have sliding rivets.

[Thomas Dietrich]

Thank you as well, William!

As I cant access the armour archive with Mac´s glorious cobwebs-threat, where he explained the propper fit for his gothic cuirasse: The complete cuirasse still sits inside the natural waist, correct?
This would make the "point" of the placart terminate somewhere around the sternum.