Reiterharnisch (Küriss) für Feld und Turnier

This armour for field and tournament is an early example of a Renaissance garniture. In addition to the armour, the garniture includes the exchange pieces needed for the melee: a second helmet, a collar, a bevor, a large reinforcing piece for breastplate, chin and left pouldron, reinforcing pieces for brow, chest, left elbow, and left hand, and a vamplate. Stylistically, the armour is informed by the Italian Renaissance, whose formal language was beginning to be adopted by armourers’ workshops north of the Alps soon after 1500. All pieces comprising the armour are rounded and smooth – unlike the pointed, geometrical details characteristic of late medieval armour (see, for instance, the one made by Kolman’s father Lorenz for Maximilian I around 1484; inv. A 62).

With its cornucopias, putti, fruit garlands, and mermaids inspired by Classical antiquity, the armour’s ornamentation, too, looks to the Renaissance. All these fire-gilt decorations are executed on a blued ground. The breastplate originally featured depictions of Saints Christopher and Barbara; today, one can only make out parts of the (much abraded) Barbara. The backplate shows traces of a Virgin Mary and Child with the inscription Ave Maria.

Andreas, Count of Sonnenberg was a scion of the seneschals of Waldburg; he was a general who served, among others, Emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I. Today, he is best remembered for having been assassinated by Felix of Werdenberg near the Swabian town of Sigmaringen in 1511. Werdenberg and Sonnenberg had long been enemies. At the wedding of Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg and Sabina of Bavaria, celebrated in 1511, the tall Sonnenberg had publicly humiliated Werdenberg, who was escorting the bride into the church, by calling out and making fun of the latter’s height (Werdenberg, streck Dich! – ‘Werdenberg, stretch yourself!’). Werdenberg avenged this ignominy soon afterwards by ambushing and killing Sonnenberg.