Cape Town Image: NYC – Metropolitan Museum of Art – Field Armor of King Henry VIII of England

A Cape Town Castle Military Museum tagged image from photographer – wallyg as published on Flickr.

NYC – Metropolitan Museum of Art – Field Armor of King Henry VIII of England

Image by wallyg

Field Armor of King Henry VIII of England
Steel, blackened, etched, and gilt; textile and leather
Italian (Milan or Brescia), about 1544

This impressive armor was made for Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) toward the end of his life when he was overweight and crippled with gout. Constructed for use on horse and on foot it was probably worn by the king during this last military campaign, the siege of Boulogne in 1544, which he commanded personally in spite of his infirmities. The harness was originally fitted with a detachable reinforcing breastplate, to which a lance-rest was attached, and a reinforce for the left pauldron (shoulder defense). A pair of exchange vambrances (arm defenses) remain in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.

The armor is described in the post mortem inventory of the king’s possessions, drawn up in 1547, as "of italian mankinge." It was possibly supplied by a Milanese merchant known in England as Francis Albert, who was licensed by Henry to import luxury goods, including armor, into England for sale. The armor was subsequently given to William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke, Henry’s esquire and an executor of his will. It it recorded at Wilton House, seat of the Pembroke family, from 1558 until it was sold in the 1920s. By the end of the eighteenth century, and until very recently, the armor was erroneously identified as having belonged to Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, its royal English origins having been forgotten.

The armor is an early example of the "anime" type, in which the breastplate and backplate are constructed of horizontal overlapping plates connected and made flexible by rivets and internal leather straps. The decoration, consisting of foliage, putti, running dogs and Renaissance candelabra and grotesque ornament, is typically Italian.

Harris Brisbane Fund, 1932 (32.130.7)

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The collection of armor, edged weapons, and firearms in The Metropolitan Museum of Art ranks with those of the other great armories of the world, in Vienna, Madrid, Dresden, and Paris. It consists of approximately 15,000 objects that range in date from about 400 B.C. to the nineteenth century. Though Western Europe and Japan are the regions most strongly represented–the collection of more than five thousand pieces of Japanese armor and weapons is the finest outside Japan–the geographical range of the collection is extraordinary, with examples from the Near East, the Middle East, India, Central Asia, China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and North America. The Arms and Armor Galleries were renovated and reinstalled in 1991 to display to better effect the outstanding collection of armor and weapons of sculptural and ornamental beauty from around the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met’s holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met’s purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America’s Favorite Architecture list.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

National Historic Register #86003556

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