Sturmhaube

This burgonet can be attributed to Jörg Sigman, a goldsmith from Augsburg. Sigman began his career in 1548 as a journeyman in the workshop of the armourer Desiderius Helmschmid, for whom he worked until 1550. Helmschmid and Sigman collaborated on a lavishly embellished armour made for Philip II of Spain that is now in the Real Armería in Madrid.

Because he had trained and worked in an armourer’s workshop, Sigman initially found it difficult to join the goldsmiths’ guild at Augsburg. Only after several interventions from King Philip II was Sigman allowed to become a master in 1552, after only four years as a journeyman, and to set up shop as a goldsmith in Augsburg.

Almost the entire surface of this helmet is covered with chased threedimensional figurative scenes. On the crest we see Mars and Venus riding in their triumphal chariots; on the skull are Aeneas’ battles in Italy, which, according to the poet Virgil, made him the progenitor of the Romans. Note also the mounted warriors on the cheek guards. On the forehead are depictions of Pyramus and Thisbe and of Venus in Vulcan’s forge; on the neck, the rape of Europa and the story of Perseus and Medea. The last three scenes are based on woodcut illustrations in an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published by Bernard Salomon at Lyon in 1557. Virgil Solis based the prints with the same subjects in his edition of the Metamorphoses (published at Frankfurt in 1563) on Salomon’s woodcuts from 1557. In the middle of the sixteenth century, this type of Mannerist decoration was the speciality of Italian, especially Milanese armourers, as well as of a number of workshops in France and the Low Countries. However, there were also several German masters, among them Jörg Sigman, who tried to satisfy the demand for such spectacular works.

In the early nineteenth century, the helmet was housed at Laxenburg Palace, an imperial hunting lodge south of Vienna. At the time, it was attributed to Emperor Charles V, but its dating suggests it was actually made for Emperor Ferdinand I or the young Emperor Maximilian II.