The Armour Archive

Gustovic posted this pic:


What's up with the helm on the guy second from the left? Are those supposed to represent hinged cheek pieces that meet in the middle? a decorative crest? The left guy has cheek pieces under the helm.

They look like stereotypical Victorian Viking wings.

It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.

I started a thread a month or so ago with a helm that showed similar wings in a St. Sebastian context - but 100 years later.
Found another winged helm in some other antique context.
Will post them later.

That panel is hard to interpret, because it has "old timey" armour and the next three show the latest style. I would read that as a winged helmet.

Quite a bit of this "Roman" armour would make fun projects, even if we can't say for sure how much of it was really worn.

It's not as strange as a crested kettle hat, in my view.
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/5736/21122/

If those are supposed to be the gods of Olympus, that's Hermes.

Or it could just be a guy with awesome wings on his helmet!

Matthew

Matthew Amt wrote:Or it could just be a guy with awesome wings on his helmet!

Matthew

Kudos for that analysis!! Like!

Best, Indi

tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.

I started a thread a month or so ago with a helm that showed similar wings in a St. Sebastian context - but 100 years later.
Found another winged helm in some other antique context.
Will post them later.

Why is this 'clearly'? Looking at the left arm of the 1st man and the neck of the second man we see highly textured surfaces that might be maile or might be cloth. The repetitive arcs are not nearly as detailed as what the artist was capable of achieving in a tighter space. Also the maile doesn't have alternating rows of ))) with ((( which tends to be more typical for artistic representation of maile. And if they are maile, what are they doing there and what holds them in shape?

Let me propose an alternate interpretation. The 'wings', of which we only see 1 clearly and don't know what the peak on the other side of the head is, seem to attach to the usual side pivot points. Is it possible that there is 1 'wing' and it is a foreshortened view of a side-pivot houndskull visor that has been flipped all the way to the rear? The wing tip would then be the pointed chin and the crescents the breaths.

I admit that maile is more likely than a hinged cheek-plate because the cheeks are covered but when I see something that is clearly and only 1 interpretation it does make sense to re-evaluate our perceptions. Since all the ))) face a single direction like feather tips it could very well be that the sculptor has depicted a man with wings on his helmet. Yeah, it sounds silly but if we didn't have solid evidence of Polish Hussars riding into battle with wings on their back I'd have said the idea was crazy.

Sean

Sean Powell wrote:

tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.

Why is this 'clearly'?

Pretty sure he was being ironic, because almost anything that a sculptor or painter can do has been called "an artistic representation of mail." So he and everyone else are supposed to think "that is silly."

Sean M wrote:

Sean Powell wrote:

tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.

Why is this 'clearly'?

Pretty sure he was being ironic...

+Tasha

Gerhard von Liebau wrote:

Sean M wrote:

Sean Powell wrote:

tiredWeasel wrote:It clearly is the artists rendition of chainmail.

Why is this 'clearly'?

Pretty sure he was being ironic...

+Tasha

Noted. Thanks!

Has anyone ever seen another bascinet with a ridge running ear-to-ear as well as front-to back?

Ernst wrote:Has anyone ever seen another bascinet with a ridge running ear-to-ear as well as front-to back?

"Made in India"?...

Ernst wrote:Has anyone ever seen another bascinet with a ridge running ear-to-ear as well as front-to back?

Nothing comes to mind (although there is a fluted bascinet on another panel, and at least one survives). My best guess is that the silversmith goofed and applied the crest in the wrong place to the wrong helmet and decided that it was not worth risking the whole panel to hammer it flat.

There is a bunch of funky perspective on that altarpiece.