Gallery 345, Arms and Armor, third floor (Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Galleries)
Main Building
Gallery 345, Arms and Armor, third floor (Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Galleries)
Main Building
These gauntlets, the finest of their kind, exhibit all the hallmarks of the work of Lorenz Helmschmid, the most brilliant German armorer of the late fifteenth century. They are superbly forged and embossed with arrays of fine ridges. Articulated lames at the wrists facilitate the motions of the hand. The latten metacarpal plates and hinges are delicately file-decorated along the edges. Lastly, each cuff is adorned at the top with a tooled latten border comparable to the ones found on late Gothic armor bearing Helmschmid's armorer's mark.
No further elements of the armor to which these gauntlets belonged are known to survive.
Gallery 345, Arms and Armor, third floor (Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Galleries)
Title: | Pair of Mitten Hand Defenses (Long Gauntlets) |
Date: | c. 1485-1490 |
Artist: | Attributed to Lorenz Helmschmid (German (active Augsburg), c. 1445–1516) |
Medium: | Iron alloy (steel), partially embossed and chased / cut; copper alloy (brass), partially engraved; leather |
Dimensions: | Left: 6 5/16 × 4 1/8 × 13 7/8 inches, 1 pounds 1.8 ounces (16 × 10.5 × 35.2 cm, 505g) Right: 4 1/8 × 4 1/8 × 13 7/8 inches, 1 pounds 0.4 ounces (10.5 × 10.5 × 35.2 cm, 465g) |
Classification: | Arms and Armor |
Credit Line: | Bequest of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch, 1977 |
Accession Number: | 1977-167-161a,b |
Geography: | Made in Germany, Europe Probably made in Augsburg, Germany, Europe |
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Gallery 345, Arms and Armor, third floor (Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Galleries)
Main Building