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Triumphal finery: Mannerism in the art of Italian armour
Apollo, Feb, 2004 by Ian Eaves
Of all the possessions of the sixteenth century nobleman, few spoke more eloquently of his wealth, taste and social standing than those that he wore. As the nominal if not actual head of his army, the message conveyed by his military attire was clearly as important to him as that conveyed by the finery that he wore at court. In an age conscious of the political value of costly pageantry, it was perhaps inevitable that competition should arise between rival rulers to appear in the richest and most impressive armours possible. Made in many cases for show father than actual use, such lavish works of art called for new levels of skill on the part of the armourer.
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None rose to the challenge with greater distinction than the armourers of northern Italy who had been the international leaders in their craft from at least the fourteenth century. Among the earliest to succeed in exploiting the demand for elaborate parade armours was Filippo Negroli of Milan (c. 1510-79), later aided by his brothers, whose superlative skills and imaginative designs earned him the patronage of the Emperor Charles v, the French kings Francois I and Henri II and other prominent princes of the time. In 1998-99, following a thorough reappraisal of the works attributed to the Negroli family by Stuart W. Pyhrr and Jose-A. Godoy, and new archival research by Silvio Leydi, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, staged its landmark exhibition 'Heroic Armor and the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries'. Although unsponsored and therefore without funds for extensive advertising, the exhibition nevertheless attracted much interest and acclaim, earning from APOLLO the accolade of 'Exhibition of the Year'. (1)
Encouraged by this success, Godoy--once again availing himself of the important archival work of Leydi--mounted at the Musee Rath, Geneva, last summer, the exhibition 'Parures Triomphales: Le manierisme dans l'art de l'armure itelienne', which took forward the story of the Italian parade armour from the time of the Negroli to the early seventeenth century. Broader in scope than its predecessor, the exhibition can with some justification lay claim to having been the most spectacular collection of fine armour ever the have been assembled in one place at one time.
It is perhaps inevitable with exhibits of such exceptional quality that a relatively high proportion of them will have been familiar ones to the specialist visitor--if only through published illustrations. Some, indeed, such as the armour made by Giovan Battista Panzeri, called Zarabaglia, and Marco Antonio Fava of Milan for the Archduke Ferdinand II of Tirol about 1559-60 (no. 17) and that probably made by Lucio Marliano, called Piccinino, of Milan for Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, about 1576-80 (nos. 75-76) (Fig. 1) have long been icons in their field and, not unexpectedly, took up prominent positions in the exhibition. Others, however, came under the spotlight for the first time.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
One can perhaps offer no higher praise to the designers of the exhibition than to suggest that even those visitors who had some previous acquaintance with its exhibits must have come away with a feeling that they had in many cases seen them properly for the first time. Published illustrations may convey a reasonably good impression of the boldly embossed ornament that dominates the decoration of so many pieces shown in the exhibition, but rarely do justice to the exquisite chasing and damascening that contribute so much to their brilliant appearance. To appreciate the richness of and splendour of these remarkable works of art fully, they have to be viewed at first hand. The Musee Rath offered an unprecedented opportunity to do so. Spaciously displayed and individually lit within a darkened setting, the one hundred and three objects that for two months graced its galleries can rarely have been seen to better advantage.
This is certainly true of the spectacular horse armour or bard made in Milan about 1585 for Charles Emanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and subsequently presented to Philip III of Spain in 1603 (no. 87), which for the first time displayed in a way that permitted a proper appreciation of the vast labour that went into its production. The stunning group of pieces hr the Turkish fashion made for the Duke of Savoy in Milan in the same period, and likewise sent to Spain as part of the gift of 1603, were perhaps the greatest surprise of the exhibition. Among other welcome surprises were the extraordinary series of painted saddles made for the Emperor Charles v and his son Philip II in Italy about 1535-50, which have only recently attracted scholarly attention.
It must obviously be seen as a matter for regret that despite the enormous amount of new research that went into the preparation of the exhibition, so few of the pieces shown in it can be attributed to specific hands. Indeed, as noted in the accompanying catalogue, even the authorship of the large group of late sixteenth-century embossed and demascened pieces that have confidently been attributed in the past to the hand of Lucio Piccinino (more properly Marliano), must be called into doubt. Paolo Morigia, in his La Nobilita di Milano of 1595, praised Lucio Piccinino both for his relief work in iron and silver and his damascening, noting that he had made costly armours for Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, and other princes. Although it has generally been assumed that the Farnese armour mentioned by Morigia is that now preserved in Vienna (no. 75), recent research in the Farnese archives has failed to discover any payment to Lucio Piccinino, raising a question mark over the attribution of that and other related armours to his hand.
