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.