Reiterharnisch (Küriss)

This armour belonged to Maurice of Orange, stadtholder of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic and one of the reformers of their army in the late sixteenth century. It comprises a close helmet with low comb, a gorget, a pair of vambraces, gauntlets, and long tassets. Breastplate and backplate were already missing in 1855, and the coeval breastplate you see today (inv. A 1404) is a modern addition to this armour.

The armour eschews all decoration, with the sole exception of engraved lines tracing the edges of the lames, crimped edges, and star-shaped ventilation holes in the visor. The back of the helmet features a small plume-holder. The helmet’s design, especially the pointed nose of the visor, suggests the armour was produced in the Netherlands. The central seam on elbows and knees and the articulated thumbs of the gauntlets also suggest it originated in the Low Countries.

The armour was long housed at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck, where it was first recorded in the early seventeenth century – that is, after the death of the collection’s founder, Archduke Ferdinand II. In the German edition of the Armamentarium Heroicum, the illustrated catalogue of the Armoury of Heroes, published 1603, Maurice is depicted wearing this armour. He has donned gorget, vambraces, and breastplate, with a helmet and tassets lying at his feet. We do not know if the breastplate depicted in this portrait is the now lost original or if it was already lost at the turn of the seventeenth century and was replaced by another in the engraving.

From 1621 onwards, the armour was listed in the inventories of the collections at Ambras Castle as ‘Maurice, Count of Nassau. A black field cuirass without greaves’ (Graf Moriz von Nassaw. Ain schwarzer Veldt Küriß ohne schinen); in 1788 it was listed as ‘Maurice, Count of Nassau, Prince of Orange. A black field armour with half-greaves, without sabatons’ (Moritz Graf von Nassau, Prinz von Oranien. Ein schwarzer Feldküras mit Halbschienen ohne Schuhe).