Armet

Origin

The origin of the armet lies in the bascinet of late 14th-century northern Italy. As the pointed skull of the bascinet was rounded over and the mail aventail at the neck was replaced by a pair of hinged cheek pieces opening from the sides, a new form was polished in the early 15th century. The place where the form we can fairly call an armet took root is most often seen as the Missaglia workshop in Milan of the 1420s and 1440s, and the same shape then spread across Italy and beyond the Alps into Burgundy, France, and England. In the Holy Roman Empire beyond the Alps a different line grew up of the brimmed sallet worn together with the bevor (chin defense), and so the armet was for a time the sign of the Italian style. In the late 15th-century age of Maximilian I the same form was polished still further, into a rounder and smoother surface, and by the middle of the 16th century the close helmet took its place and the armet itself slowly withdrew.

Features

• Streamlined rounded skull set to the curve of the head
• A pair of cheek pieces hinging open inward from each side
• A hinged visor lifted upward at the front
• A locking structure in which the two pieces met beneath the chin and were fastened at one point
• A round disc, the rondel, set at the back to cover the strap and the lock
• The highest craft of the Italian armor masters, above all the Missaglia of Milan

Stories

The armet was set as the headpiece of the 15th-century Italian full plate harness, the white harness, and was worn in field and tournament alike. Inside it the man set a thin leather cap and a thick padded coif to spread the shock, drew the armet over them, closed the two cheek pieces, and fastened the latch beneath the chin, so that it sat on the head like a single shell of armor. In combat the visor was lowered, leaving only a narrow sight slit, and the same visor could be raised quickly with one hand, so that on horseback, when a call was heard or an order had to be given, the face was set free at once. In the tournament, above all in the joust, a thick reinforcing plate called the grand guard was fitted on the front of the same armet to take the heavier blow of the lance from straight ahead. In the Italian Wars of 1450 to 1500, the city-state strife within Italy and the French invasions of Italy, the knights of both sides struck shield to shield with the armet on their heads.

Weakness

The weakness of the armet grew straight out of its close-fitting weave. Wrapping head and neck in a single face of plate gave a defense of front and side beyond compare, but for that the way for heat and sweat to leave the inside was narrow, and on a long field in high summer the same knight tired in a short time. The point at which the two cheek pieces locked beneath the chin was the place at which a loose latch could undo a whole face of protection at once, and the care of the latch was the care of the helmet itself. The narrow sight slit gathered every arrow and sword point at one place, and against a blow aimed exactly at the same point from the front it was, by contrast, weak. Above all, a single armet had to be polished by separate hand to the curve of one head, so its price was very high, and so for a long time the same helmet stayed within the seat of the noble knight and did not easily reach the hand of the common foot.

Cultural Significance

The armet is the work in which the warrior craft and the technical skill of Renaissance Italy were gathered into one place, and it is the clearest visual sign of the age in which armor was raised into a piece of art. The Missaglia workshop of Milan for a century polished and sent armets from a single place to the princes and knights of every land of Europe, and the Negroli family of the same city, by the middle of the 16th century, made splendid parade armets modeled on the face of a Greek hero or a beast and sent the sculptural helmets to the courts of Vienna, Madrid, and Paris. In the Hofjagd- und Ruestkammer of Vienna, the Real Armeria of Madrid, the Wallace Collection and the British Museum in London, and the Arms and Armor wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, splendid Italian armets of the 15th and 16th centuries hold a place. In everyday Italian the diminutive 'armetto', a little helmet, is a homely word that shows that the same piece was not only the pride of the warrior craft of an age but reached even to the mouth of the citizen.

In Popular Culture

The armet sits on the head of the knight in films, period dramas, and games about Renaissance Italy and Western Europe of the 15th to the 16th centuries. The rounded helmets borne by the knights in Ivanhoe (1982) and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and the late headpiece of the full plate seen in the later scenes of Kingdom of Heaven (2005), are its close kin, and in the BBC period dramas Wolf Hall and The White Queen, the knights of the English Wars of the Roses bear the same shape. The action RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance, set in 15th-century Bohemia, and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, and For Honor, set the armet aside as the sign of the Italian-style warrior, and at the mannequins of the museum and the prints of the films the same rounded skull and the two cheek pieces hold the clearest face of the Renaissance knight. Films, however, often draw the armet and the close helmet that followed it as one, and so the fine differences of the two shapes are often blurred.

Trivia

• The place where the form we can fairly call an armet took root is most often seen as the Missaglia workshop in Milan of the 1420s and 1440s, and for a century the craft of the same workshop raised the headpiece of the white harness of the courts of Europe into a single shape.
• In the Holy Roman Empire beyond the Alps a different line grew up of the brimmed sallet worn together with the bevor (chin defense), and so the armet was for a time the sign of the Italian style, and this difference shows most clearly the two branches, north and south, of the European knight of the 15th century.
• By the middle of the 16th century the Negroli family of Milan made parade armets modeled on the face of a Greek hero or a beast and sent them to the courts of Vienna, Madrid, and Paris, and many of them are kept to this day at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Real Armeria in Madrid, holding the most splendid seat of Renaissance armor craft.