Half-armour

 

 

On February 9, 1578, shortly before Sebastiano Venier died on

3 March, Veit von Dornberg († 1591) reported back to Ferdinand II,

Archduke of Austria (1529-1595) that the doge was willing to send his personal

armour, that is the armour he himself had worn. It is first listed in 1593 in

the inventories of the ‘Armoury of Heroes’ the Archduke had installed at Ambras

Castle. It is even pictured in a woodcut included in the ‘Armamentarium

Heroicum’, the catalogue of the collection published in Latin in 1601 and in

German in 1603. In a painting portraying the victors of the Battle of Lepanto

of 1571 (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Picture Gallery, inv. GG 8270)

Sebastiano Venier is shown wearing this armour.

 

The armour comprises neither leg pieces nor a lance rest, which

would be the norm for a harness for mounted combat. Equipped with a burgonet

complete with bevor, it was perfect for fighting on foot. It represents an

excellent compromise between offering adequate protection for the wearer and

allowing him to move and breathe easily and enjoy unimpaired vision. Apart from

the embellished surfaces, the design is simple and functional. The crimping

along the edges was common at the time. In both the painting mentioned above

and the description included in the 1596 Ambras inventory the armour appears

not to have been blued. In keeping with sixteenth-century fashion, surfaces are

articulated with gilt etched bands with plant ornamentation, some of which also

feature the occasional stag, bird or angel. The dotted ground executed with a

scriber is typical of Italian armour. There are no arms and no iconographic

clues to either its wearer or Venice.

 

Sebastiano Venier served the Serenissima in Candida, Brescia,

Verona and on Corfu. In 1577, a few years after he had commanded the Venetian

fleet in the victory of the Christian navy over the Ottoman navy in the Battle

of Lepanto, he was elected Doge of Venice. The armour lacks a maker’s mark, a signature

of the etcher and a date.