The Armour Archive

Ive been looking really carefully at more and more rerebraces/upper cannons lately and Ive started noticing something very subtle I had never picked up quite so much.

On at least some effigies and brasses, there appears to be a very slight curvature along its length. This naturally makes some sense, but I had never thought of the rerebrace as exhibiting much in the way of curvature.

It was the Black Princes effigial harness that got me thinking about this. Note his the slight curve along the length of the rerebrace:



[img]http://www.zaalbooks.nl/BookImages/13872.jpg[/img]




....for a while I thought that must have been photographic distortion, until I started looking at more and more effigies from the period. Not all exhibit this curvature. And that got me thinking if I missed it (and Im pretty anal about form/proportion), is it possible that the sculptors of effigies could have overlooked such a detail too, since only about 40% of the effigies and brasses Ive seen exhibit this subtle curve?

Its little things like this that make me love armour so much ya know



.

Yes, they could have overlooked that detail.

Armorers could have overlooked that detail as well.

Some armorers built Rolls Royces, some built Yugos.

(And the curvature of the rerebrace/upper cannon would also have depended on the shape of the wearer's arm. Perhaps it wasn't always warranted to curve plates along the length.)

I'm thinking that for us today, with the perfectly even steel plates we are using, making a slight curvature at just some point of the plate makes the project a lot more difficult since that hammerwork will have to be blended into the otherwise perfectly even and straight surface. At that time - if, as I understand it, the starting plate was a lot more uneven then ours - the threshold to making curvature would be a lot lower. Even if the curvature was really small.

An example of a very long rerebrace that goes up to the shoulder area, and would thus warrant curvature for most arms, is one seen in Osprey's "Medieval Scandinavian Armies (2): 1300-1500". On page 40 there is a photo of the effigy of Duke Christopher of Denmark, dead 1363. According to the authors the arm harness is old fashioned and lacks couters. There seems to be a noticeable curvature along the entire length of the rerebrace.

(It is also the only source of western-styled "bazubands" I have ever seen. Makes me think that early arm harnesses that uses floating elbows and long rerebraces (like that in the other topic posted earlier: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=73758) could have had these long vambraces and rerebraces that together covered a lot of the elbow underneath the couter.. On the other hand the Danes and Swedes had their adventures in the east around this time, which could have given them some ideas that diverge from standard western solutions.)

I haven't yet found a picture of this effigy on the net. Would probably not be ok to scan it

Ok, here are pictures available online on Duke Christopher. Unfortunately the arms really doesn't show well in any of these, but perhaps give an idea.

From a random photo album, vambrace and lack of couter somewhat visible:
http://picasaweb.google.com/erling7400/ ... 5262452130

Scroll down until you find Christopher, small picture but rerebraces can almost be seen, perhaps it is best to save it and magnify the picture to get a better look.
http://www.roskildedomkirke.dk/uk/

And I have also attached the pictures for your viewing pleasure :

Ive got a couple dozen pictures showing this slight curve...Ill post later today or tommorrow.

Its not hard to make the curve....Im just curious as to how frequently it appears in the art: effigies, brasses etc. Another detail is how shaped the deltoids are...which is more common to see, but its still not present on all effigies/brasses. The Black Princes are prominent, a feature I think looks great.

I agree with you Al, this may be a case of rolls vs. yugos in both the actual armor and/or the artwork....or both.


another example:
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:kFk ... e690-s.jpg