[Alessio J. Orlandi]

First of all, sorry guys if this topic has already been discussed, but i couldn't find anything in the forum
Here is my question: what kind of "armour" was used by Italian foot soliders in mid XV century?
We know it was era of Condottieri, and that many mercenary companies mostly used to fight on horses. But there were foot-mercenaries too...
So, since i don't have a horse and i don't want to play the heavy armoured Condottiero during re-enactments, looks like an infantry-look is good for me
Searching on www.wga.hu and http://prodigi.bl.uk/illcat/searchSimple.asp for images portraing italian infantrymen in the time 1440-1480, I could only find a painting from Paolo Uccello in which two light armoured guys are wearing a brigantine and a helm.
On the contrary, there are a lot of french, flemish and german miniatures portraing infantrymen variously armoured. Look like in Germany infantry used to wear an iron breast plate as well as brigantine, gauntlets and helm.
Problem is: I can't find anything that proves that iron breastplates were used by Italian infantrymen. Looks likely that Italian foot soldiers preferred brigantines over breasts.
Can anyone carry more evidences? I'd like to recreate something historically correct!
Thank you all guys so smart, so wise

[William Knight]

There are several infantry breastplates of Italian manufacture included in Alan William's [url]The Knight and the Blast Furnace[/url], I believe they are in Churburg. Unfortunately, they are in a more northern european style, and so might be intended for the export market, so it's hard to tell if they were for Italians.

Somewhere I heard that breastplates on infantry was more of a thing in the Germanies (Swiss confederation, HRE proper etc.) than elsewhere in europe during the 15th century. I know the English don't seem to have favored them except for men at arms.

-Wilhelm