Who Wore Armor?

Age of Armor Access Guide: Treasures from the Higgins Collection at the Worcester Art Museum

From the aristocracy to common soldiers, armor provided practical and symbolic advantages. It bestowed upon its wearer a knightly image, even long after armor’s decline. The aristocracy often memorialized their legacies in monumental portraits portraying them in armor to project their martial skill, chivalric virtue, and high status. Soldiers of lower social classes wore armor as well, typically mass-produced and less refined, to protect them when serving in military units on campaign.

Although there are written references to women participating in armed conflict from most historical periods, medieval and Renaissance illustrations showing women in armor are largely allegorical or reimagined histories. No surviving historic suits of armor are known to have been worn by women. The examples that remain mark armor as a signifier of traditional masculine social roles and power.

Field Armor, from a Garniture, perhaps for Siegmund Friedrich, Freiherr von Herberstein
Probably Augsburg, southern Germany
About 1580
Etched and gilded steel, iron, brass, leather fragments, and modern leather with restorations
Weight 34 lb. 2 oz.
The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.660
Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved

Partisan
Italy
late 1500s–early 1600s
Steel, brass, and wood
Weight 4 lb. 12 oz.
The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.198
Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved

A garniture was a suit of armor with pieces that could be traded in and out to adapt it for different uses. An infantry officer might have worn this suit as displayed. A light cavalryman might have worn a similar configuration for scouting or skirmishing.

Helmet
Sudanic region, Africa
1800s
Russeted iron with gilding
Weight 5 lb. 9 oz.
The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.91
Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved

The shape of this helmet resembles the domes in religious architecture in Islamic north Africa. It is a particularly fine example that still retains much of its original gold-covered surface. Likely made for a high-ranking military leader, it may have seen service in the Sudanese uprising against the British and their colonial interests in northeast Africa in the late 1800s.

Gallo Gallina
Italian, 1796–1874, active in Milan
Encounter of Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma
About 1850
Hand-colored engraving on paper
Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer at the Denver Art Museum, 2000.353

Some people associate armor with virtue, prowess, and authority. For others, it represents violence. Spanish soldiers wore steel armor as they colonized the Americas, bringing trauma and social change to the Indigenous people. This image is a fiction imagined in the 1800s of the meeting of Spanish conqueror, Hernán Cortés, and the Aztec ruler, Moctezuma, following Cortés’s march to Tenochtitlan in 1519.

Anthony van Dyck
Flemish, 1599–1641
Portrait of George Hay, 2nd Earl of Kinnoull
About 1638–40
Oil paint on canvas
Denver Art Museum: On Loan from a Private Collection

Earl George Hay was an important landholder and politician in Scotland and an ill-fated supporter of the monarchy during the English Civil Wars (1642–51). Here the earl is portrayed at the height of his power, with his elegant armor projecting his social and military authority. Hay commissioned this portrait from Anthony van Dyck, a Flemish artist residing in England. Van Dyck was one of the foremost painters of his day, famous for his portraits of prominent patrons.

Edward Collier
Dutch, about 1642–1708, active in England
Ode to a Dead Soldier
1669
Oil paint on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2020.4

This vanitas painting commemorates the life of a soldier, displaying objects from his military career: armor, weapons, medals, and a book on the use of artillery. The miniature at the center is probably a portrait of the soldier. The pocket watch and skull allude to the passage of time and the brevity of human life.

Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Collection at the Worcester Art Museum is organized by the Worcester Art Museum. Support is provided by the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS4.