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THROWBACK: Thirty-Five Saxon Suits of Armor, with Chassica Kirchhoff
31 Plays11 months ago
It's kinetic sculpture, it's haute couture, it’s . . . armor! This month, Ben speaks with Chassica Kirchhoff, an assistant curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, about a suite of metal suits from the 1500s that were worn and jousted in by the dukes of Saxony. Emblematic of the feisty Protestant state’s chivalric past and supreme examples of Saxon metalworking prowess, by the 1700s the suits of armor had come to represent “a fulcrum between the early modern past and the Enlightenment present,” Kirchoff says. Shortly thereafter they went on display at the famous Green Vault in Dresden, a precursor of modern museums.
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Transcript
Introduction & Special Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, Curious Objects listeners.
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm Sammy Dilotti, Senior Editor at the Magazine Antiques and producer of this podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
Host Ben Miller is off this week, and so we're taking a trip into the vault.
00:00:13
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The Green Vault, that is, in Dresden.
00:00:16
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Recognized as the oldest museum in the world, it's the repository for many fine and unusual things, including a very special collection of suits of armor from the 16th century.
00:00:26
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Ben, along with Michael Diaz Griffith, spoke with Chaska Kirchhoff of the Detroit Institute of Arts on the subject of those suits a few years ago, and we revisit their conversation in this episode.
Michael's New Chapter & Collaboration
00:00:50
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:54
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And I'm Michael Diaz-Griffith.
00:00:56
Speaker
And Michael, this is a bittersweet moment for me, because although I certainly hope to have you back on Curious Objects in the future, this is your last episode with me formally as co-host.
00:01:06
Speaker
It is, and it is bittersweet.
00:01:08
Speaker
Bitter because I've enjoyed being co-host so much and learning with you and with our audience, but sweet because I'm moving on to a full-time role with Sir John Soane's Museum Foundation, a really fabulous organization based surprisingly in New York.
00:01:27
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And while I'll still be able to do podcasts and hang out with you in the context of the New Antiquarians, Ben, I've got a really big job to do.
00:01:38
Speaker
So I'm trying to arrange my schedule so that I can...
00:01:42
Speaker
get it all done.
00:01:43
Speaker
And unfortunately, this is one area where, from my perspective, I know I'm not as needed as in other areas because you've got such a fantastic handle on this podcast that you created.
00:01:59
Speaker
Well, that's very kind, but it really, you've brought a fantastic energy to Curious Objects that I've been very grateful for.
00:02:05
Speaker
And it's been a lot of fun working with you.
00:02:07
Speaker
Although I have to say, as you mentioned, you and I are going to have plenty of opportunities to work together on Curious Objects again, I hope, but certainly with the new Antiquarians, which for listeners who aren't aware, this is an organization we started to try and
00:02:22
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expand the tent of people, particularly young people interested in art and decorative art.
00:02:30
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So we're doing plenty of events with the New Antiquarians, including one next week with Christie's.
00:02:36
Speaker
And we'll be very active.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, very active in that fold.
00:02:40
Speaker
And I hope to return to the podcast to spread the word about the Seau Museum in America.
Sir John Soane's Legacy & Foundation Support
00:02:48
Speaker
Can you tell us just a little bit about the Sewn Museum and the foundation and the work that you guys are doing?
00:02:55
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Sure.
00:02:56
Speaker
Well, John Sewn was an architect who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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And
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He was a neoclassicist, but a very inventive one known for his particularly attenuated light and creative manner of designing both residential spaces, but more importantly, great public spaces, including the Bank of England, which was sadly demolished.
00:03:26
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But he did something that really extended his legacy beyond all of those buildings.
00:03:32
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He constructed a museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields in Hoban in London.
00:03:38
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And I'm sure some of our listeners have been there.
00:03:40
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I certainly spent a great deal of time there as a grad student in London.
00:03:46
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And he negotiated through a private act of parliament that this building, which was
00:03:53
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contained his private apartments where he lived with his wife, but also a museum that he built during his lifetime and outfitted with his collections.
00:04:04
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They were left to the nation in perpetuity.
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And the act stipulated that the collections would be passed on to board of trustees acting on behalf of the nation.
00:04:18
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and that all would be preserved as nearly as possible in the state they were at during Soane's lifetime.
00:04:25
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So the museum is a fascinating sort of time capsule, but it's also, you know, a very creative institution that works hard to interpret the material in the building, as well as exhibitions that come to the building in a very...
00:04:45
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forward-looking way.
00:04:46
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So I love what they do.
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And the foundation in America, we support the museum and interact with them through fundraising and all sorts of interesting initiatives.
00:04:58
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But we also mount our own programming in New York and hopefully soon regionally from a kind of Sonian perspective.
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So you'll hear much more about this.
00:05:09
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Yeah, well, I can't wait to see what you do with the organization.
00:05:12
Speaker
It's super exciting to see you doing this.
00:05:16
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It's an incredible position for you to be taking and huge congratulations to you on that, even if it means we're losing you on Curious Objects.
00:05:26
Speaker
Speaking of which, let's get to chatting a little about today's Curious Object.
Interview with Chaska Kirchhoff on Armor History
00:05:31
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I love this interview, Ben.
00:05:32
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It's so good.
00:05:34
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Thanks.
00:05:34
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Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
00:05:36
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So I talked, this was actually before the shutdown.
00:05:40
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I had a conversation with Chaska Kirchhoff, who is a specialist in arms and armor, which is a subject that gets my inner high schooler very excited.
00:05:51
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But when we talked, she was actually at the Metropolitan Museum, but she's since moved to the Detroit Institute of Art, a sad loss for the city of New York.
00:06:01
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But we had the chance to talk about this group of suits of armor that really opened up for me a new way of thinking about objects and the way that they move through history.
00:06:15
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Yeah, this sort of perspective on, quote, longitudinal history is fascinating to me.
00:06:22
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And, you know, while I do think, even on some of our episodes, we've thought about the journeys that objects take through time, you know, colonial Williamsburg, we often think about in the context of the 18th century, the 1930s, and today, for example.
00:06:38
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But we don't always do that.
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And I think we spend a lot of time
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thinking very carefully and closely about how to interpret objects in the present so that their relevance is evident to newer audiences.
00:06:53
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At least that's been a focus for you and me, right, Ben?
00:06:56
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But it's important to think about the journeys that objects take and all of the different ways they've been interpreted and received through time.
00:07:06
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And this interview does a really good job of highlighting that.
00:07:10
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Yeah, it can really help bring objects to life when you think about them existing, not just at the moment that they were made and today, but at all the moments in between.
00:07:18
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And that can also be a little overwhelming.
00:07:21
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But in the case of these suits of armor, they play so many different symbolic roles through the generations.
00:07:26
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And it was really fascinating for me to dive into that with Jessica.
00:07:30
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So let's, without further ado, let's dive into that interview.
00:07:35
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But thank you so much, Michael.
00:07:37
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Again, it's been a huge pleasure having you on Curious Objects.
00:07:41
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And I hope we'll have you back on in the not too distant future.
00:07:44
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Thank you, Ben.
00:07:45
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It's been a pleasure and an honor.
00:07:48
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And to all of our listeners, thank you for letting me go on this podcast journey with you.
00:07:53
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I'll see you soon.
00:07:56
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Since 1805, Freeman's has been part of the fabric of Philadelphia, helping generations of clients in the buying and selling of fine and decorative arts, jewelry, design, and more.
00:08:05
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00:08:14
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Visit freemansauction.com to request a complimentary auction estimate or to speak with one of their specialists.
00:08:43
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Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
00:08:52
Speaker
Jessica Kirchhoff, thank you so much for joining me.
00:08:55
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You're welcome.
00:08:56
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I'm glad to be here.
00:08:57
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And we're going to talk today about a group of works of armor.
00:09:03
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which is something we've never talked about on this podcast before, and I'm really excited to dive into it, especially because there's an unusually interesting history behind this set.
00:09:12
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But before we get into that, I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are.
00:09:18
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You're starting right now a job at the Detroit Institute of Art.
00:09:23
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which is very exciting.
00:09:24
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But the path you took to get there is totally fascinating.
00:09:29
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And I think listeners would be interested to know how you developed your interest in arms and armor.
00:09:35
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Absolutely.
00:09:36
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It's a nonlinear pathway.
00:09:40
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So as we've mentioned in conversation, I was born in the Missouri Ozarks, which is not a place that most people associate with high culture or particularly with Central European arms and armor.
00:09:51
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You can say that.
00:09:53
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But my background was really as a maker.
00:09:56
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So from a very young age, I was an artist.
00:09:59
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I was interested in jewelry making and metal work.
00:10:02
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I attended the Missouri Fine Arts Academy in the last year of high school.
00:10:07
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I worked in non-ferrous metal, so in silver, gold, copper, as well as in ferrous metals.
00:10:13
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I was trained as a welder.
00:10:15
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Ferrous metals being iron.
00:10:16
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Yes.
00:10:18
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So iron, steel.
00:10:20
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I was actually trained as a welder.
00:10:21
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I still, I think, have an OSHA certification in welding and also as a glass blower.
00:10:27
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So I had this...
00:10:28
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this hand in sort of the flammable aspects of art making for a long time.
00:10:34
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And as I considered my future and considered applying to MFA programs and sculpture or glass or metal, it became evident to me that
00:10:46
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all of my artwork was essentially about art history, which had been my second major throughout my collegiate experience and really the source of inspiration for most of the objects that I made.
00:10:57
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And so I realized that art history was my true path.
00:11:01
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And the first time I was able to touch and handle an object of armor, a martial object, I really was...
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immediately enchanted.
00:11:11
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What was it?
00:11:11
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It was a breastplate and it was actually a revivalist breastplate.
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So it was a breastplate that was made probably in the mid 19th century by a guy named Aaron Schmidt in Munich.
00:11:21
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And he was a dealer and maker of historicizing armors.
00:11:26
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He actually had access to many of the works in the Kunsthistorisch Museum.
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So he made these amazing replicas of really some of the greatest works of the armorers art ever produced at the end of the 15th century.
00:11:37
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One of these somehow made it to Kansas.
00:11:39
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And so as a young graduate student, I was able to handle and examine this object, which led me down a trail to Vienna, to the Kunsthistorisch Museum, to the source material.
00:11:48
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And, you know, I never looked back.
00:11:52
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It was love at first sight with arms and armor.
00:11:55
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You know, it's kinetic sculpture, it's haute couture, it's all of these things sort of rolled into this amazing, innovative, metallic surface.
00:12:03
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Yeah.
00:12:04
Speaker
Right, so you've now become a scholar of Arms in Armor specifically, and what we're talking about today is this incredible group that you've been working with and studying at the Metropolitan Museum, and there's an example from this collection at Detroit as well.
Saxon Armors in Tournaments
00:12:27
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And what interested me about this group when you started to tell me about them is that they have this
00:12:34
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life that is not, you know, we were just talking before we started here about how objects are sometimes treated as having been made at one point in time and then being experienced at another point in time today and having very little life in between then and now.
00:12:54
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But with this particular group of armor, we actually know a fair bit about what's happened between the day they were made and today.
00:13:05
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that course of events actually sheds light on a lot of interesting facets of history.
00:13:12
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So I'm excited to dive in.
00:13:14
Speaker
So tell us just for starters, what are these objects and when were they made?
00:13:20
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Yeah, so the objects that I've been working on recently really as part of my mandate at the Metropolitan Museum to flesh out some of the provenance histories of the objects in the collections of arms and armor, about 14,000 objects.
00:13:35
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But within that body of work, these armors really stood out to me because they have such a well-documented past.
00:13:43
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And there are so many named individuals, so many personae,
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with which we can associate those armors.
00:13:49
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And these are armors that were made for a form of knightly sport, a form of tournament called the Balianrennen,
00:13:56
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which is a form of renin.
00:13:58
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The renin is essentially the joust of war.
00:14:00
Speaker
So it's a joust between two combatants fought across a tilt barrier, a wall, using sharpened lances.
00:14:08
Speaker
The joust of war always uses sharpened lances.
00:14:11
Speaker
So it's really, it's a kind of sport.
00:14:13
Speaker
It's not combat in earnest, but it is very dangerous.
00:14:18
Speaker
And that name, joust of war, acknowledges the danger of jousting with sharp lances.
00:14:23
Speaker
So give me a little more context here.
00:14:26
Speaker
The joust is distinct from combat, as you say, it's an athletic event and a performative event.
00:14:31
Speaker
But there were real stakes.
00:14:33
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I mean, people were injured and killed.
00:14:37
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These armors were specialized for this sport.
00:14:42
Speaker
They weren't meant to be used in real battle, is that right?
00:14:45
Speaker
That's absolutely correct.
00:14:47
Speaker
And it's interesting because you bring up the sort of the physical stakes of knightly sports such as the joust.
00:14:53
Speaker
And these armors that we're talking about were actually made during the 1580s.
00:14:57
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So they're very late in the lifetime of what we consider the tournament, the popularity of the tournament at the European court.
00:15:04
Speaker
And when we think about the rise and fall, if you will, of jousting as a preferred sport for the aristocracy, for the princely classes,
00:15:15
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It's something that really started to die out by the end of the 16th century when these armors were made because of safety concerns.
00:15:22
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So we have in the third quarter of the 16th century, the death of King Henry II of France as a direct result of a jousting incident.
00:15:32
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A splinter from a shattered lance actually made its way
00:15:35
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through his visor and into his eye.
00:15:38
Speaker
And yeah, it was a bad way to go.
00:15:41
Speaker
And so as you can imagine, the elites of Europe during the period realized that, you know, to a certain extent, jeopardizing the life of the king in the name of sport was not necessarily the best form of statecraft.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, it seems a little extreme.
00:15:58
Speaker
president playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions.
00:16:01
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:16:03
Speaker
And so by the 1580s, when this group of armors were produced, the joust had really fallen out of favor in many parts of Europe, but it survived in Saxony because of the way that it could telegraph bravery, the way that it could telegraph martial prowess.
00:16:17
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It allowed princes to perform their martial skills and
00:16:22
Speaker
off of the battlefield for an audience that was far broader than soldiers or other commanders.
00:16:26
Speaker
It included ladies, it included members of the clergy, it included the patricians of the towns that they ruled.
00:16:32
Speaker
So it was a really effective way of telegraphing and performing power.
00:16:36
Speaker
What was different about Saxony?
00:16:39
Speaker
Saxony was interesting because it was, I think, very important for the electors and later the kings from the 19th century onward of Saxony to establish themselves as powerful because they really had existed for a very long time in tension with the Holy Roman Empire, particularly from the genesis of the Reformation in 1517.
00:17:00
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We know that the Dukes of Saxony were early adopters of Reformation thought, were supporters and protectors of Martin Luther.
00:17:09
Speaker
And so in that way, they really did set themselves up as sort of counterpoints to the Catholic Holy Roman emperors who were the premier court of the time.
00:17:19
Speaker
And so Saxony in many ways sort of developed in parallel to the courts of more well-known rulers like Maximilian I and Charles V, Ferdinand I down in Austria.
00:17:30
Speaker
So you get the sort of northeastern German counterpart in Saxony.
00:17:35
Speaker
So they had a particular interest in maintaining this aura of chivalry, of martial prowess, and the Joust was a pretty good way of doing that.
00:17:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I would argue that it also has to do with the materiality of the armor itself, the sort of materiality of martial technology, because Saxony is a center of mining and smelting.
00:17:59
Speaker
And at this time in the early modern period, it's one of the sort of main industries for which they're known and also innovation in the metal arts.
00:18:07
Speaker
So, for instance, you know, the Dukes of Saxony, people like Augustus I, who actually
00:18:14
Speaker
also commissioned amazing tools.
00:18:16
Speaker
So his wire drawing table is currently on view at the Met in making marbles.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
So he would performatively enact these aspects of metal craft for his court.
00:18:28
Speaker
And that wire drawing table, which is about
00:18:31
Speaker
eight feet long, it's an enormous object, is decorated with all of this beautiful engraving and the steel parts of the tool, essentially, which were etched by the same makers who made the weapons for the court.
00:18:45
Speaker
And the sides of the table are decorated with marquetry that represents tournaments at the Saxon court.
00:18:51
Speaker
So there's this sort of coexistence, this
00:18:57
Speaker
almost complementary relationship between the metal arts, the performance of the metal arts, even by the prints, and martial prowess, martial skill, and the sorts of constructions of the martial body encased in steel that we see in the armors.
00:19:14
Speaker
Okay, so take us back to the armors for a second then.
00:19:17
Speaker
So these were made in, you say, in the 1580s, and what quantity of material are we talking about?
00:19:26
Speaker
In terms of quantity, do you mean weight or?
00:19:29
Speaker
Well, yes, I am interested in just how large and thick and heavy they were, but also how many individual pieces.
00:19:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:19:39
Speaker
So we know of at least 35 of these armors existing from the period.
00:19:42
Speaker
of those 29 remained in the Saxon collections up until the modern era, essentially up until the 19th century, which is, I think, really spectacular to think about this group of objects.
00:19:53
Speaker
And also when we think about armors, you know, we as specialists in arms and armor really think about armors as individual works.
00:20:02
Speaker
We think of them
00:20:03
Speaker
as objects that were made on a bespoke basis in most cases.
00:20:07
Speaker
Luxury armors were made to measure for the princes who wore them in the moment they wore them, so they really do become sort of an index of a body in that particular time.
00:20:16
Speaker
Right.
00:20:17
Speaker
You gain weight in middle age and you need a new set of armor.
00:20:19
Speaker
Exactly.
00:20:20
Speaker
Or you need to add a little bit of steel along the side of your breastplate, which we have examples of.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:26
Speaker
But in this case, it was a group of armors that were made for the courtiers of the Saxon court.
00:20:32
Speaker
So these are not the jousting armors that were worn by the electors of Saxony.
00:20:37
Speaker
They were armors that were worn by members of the court for various contests.
00:20:42
Speaker
And therefore, instead of being like a bespoke suit that you would order maybe from Brooks Brothers,
00:20:47
Speaker
It's more like a really well-made set of football pads.
00:20:53
Speaker
Right.
00:20:53
Speaker
I like that analogy.
00:20:56
Speaker
I mean, it's interesting.
00:20:57
Speaker
I was a band kid when I was younger, and I always think of them as being sort of like band uniforms because it's an object that, you know, you select the one that fits you and you wear it for the duration of the time that it's needed and then you give it back.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so this idea of the uniform or the sports equipment.
00:21:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:21:15
Speaker
So they're really sort of unusual in that sense.
00:21:19
Speaker
They exist in this gray area between princely luxury armors for the tournament and what we call munitions armors, the kinds of armors that would have been made for the infantry or for the regular fighting men of the period.
00:21:31
Speaker
So they're really special in that sense.
00:21:34
Speaker
And this is interesting, is that, you know, armor was an expensive investment.
00:21:43
Speaker
And
00:21:44
Speaker
So these pieces, were they paid for by the electors and then lent to the courtiers who would have worn them?
00:21:53
Speaker
And is that how infantry armor would have worked as well in the period?
00:21:59
Speaker
Or would the infantry have been required to purchase their own armor?
00:22:04
Speaker
It depended on what part of the infantry you were in and what various principality or prince bishopric.
00:22:11
Speaker
We have to remember that Central Europe and the Holy Roman Empire at this time is sort of this complex patchwork of political entities alongside, you know, mercenary companies like the Landsknecht forces for whom armor was frequently a part of the loot that was captured on the battlefield.
00:22:31
Speaker
So you would see people from all
00:22:33
Speaker
socioeconomic statuses actually wearing luxury armors that had been captured.
00:22:38
Speaker
In the case of civic militias, people who were defending the towns in which they lived, they were required to provide their own armors.
00:22:47
Speaker
So in many cases, people would be wearing armors that were one, two, three generations old.
00:22:53
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:22:54
Speaker
Because it was a very expensive proposition to get a set of armor, what we call a garniture.
00:23:00
Speaker
So a set of interchangeable pieces of armor.
00:23:02
Speaker
Or even a breastplate and a helmet for a patrician who's required to have these objects.
00:23:07
Speaker
So they would be passed down.
00:23:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:09
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:09
Speaker
In some cases, infantry would be provided with armor.
00:23:12
Speaker
That's the case for the infantry who fought for Maximilian during the North Italian Wars in the early part of the 16th century.
00:23:19
Speaker
So it runs the gamut.
00:23:21
Speaker
In the case of the jousting armors that we're talking about, again, not for battle, a different type of object, less bellicose, but still imposing.
00:23:30
Speaker
These would have been kept in the Saxon arsenal and lent out to the courtiers.
00:23:36
Speaker
So if you were invited to participate in a joust at the court of Christian I, who was likely the elector under whom these armors were ordered, or any of his successors,
00:23:47
Speaker
then you would come and be fitted for the one that fit you the best, and then you would wear it in tournaments, perhaps over the course of years, and then give it back to the arsenal.
00:23:57
Speaker
And the arsenal was also the display space for these objects, because we do have documentations for their display alongside the armors of the princes.
00:24:05
Speaker
So they become sort of a ghostly court in that way.
00:24:08
Speaker
Wow.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker
Okay, so how much money are we talking about?
00:24:11
Speaker
What would it have cost to commission the production of 35?
00:24:16
Speaker
sets of jousting armor?
00:24:17
Speaker
That's a pretty difficult question and I hope to undertake some research in the months and years ahead to uncover more of those primary sources.
00:24:27
Speaker
There's quite a bit less research on the armors produced in northern Germany compared to
00:24:33
Speaker
So when we think about receipts, which are really a goldmine for those of us working really on any form of artwork, but armors in particular, because we're always trying to make a case for the value of these objects during the period, that armors were valued artworks.
00:24:51
Speaker
However, many of the primary sources that we have, which have been discovered by people like Alexander von Eizenstein in the middle of the 20th century by Mike,
00:25:00
Speaker
Pierre Terjanian, who just undertook the Last Night exhibition more recently.
00:25:06
Speaker
Most of that documentation relates to the southern German Habsburg courts.
00:25:12
Speaker
There's a lot of documentation for armors coming out of southern Germany, Augsburg, Nuremberg,
00:25:18
Speaker
Austria, specifically Innsbruck, as well as the Netherlands.
00:25:22
Speaker
But the Saxon court is far less well documented.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, and I would love to be able to sort of reconstruct the lives and the checkbooks of those armorers someday.
00:25:36
Speaker
Okay, well, we'll leave that for the next time then.
00:25:49
Speaker
We'll be back in just a moment with Jessica Kirchhoff, but first I want to say thank you, as always, for listening.
00:25:55
Speaker
If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or find me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:26:02
Speaker
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00:26:05
Speaker
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Thanks so much.
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Thanks for listening to Curious Objects.
00:28:35
Speaker
So now let's take these forward through history because you said earlier that when these armors were made, we were already at the tail end of the period during which that kind of pageantry was still in vogue.
00:28:50
Speaker
And so how long do you think these armors would have been used for that original purpose?
00:28:58
Speaker
These are interesting because they include
00:29:03
Speaker
design aspects that actually allowed them to be used quote unquote more comfortably they're not they're not comfortable in the way that we would imagine them to be um but but help to increase the safety of these objects so that they could be used um
00:29:18
Speaker
really much longer than we would anticipate.
00:29:21
Speaker
And that's one of the things that I think is so spectacular about them is that these are objects that had working lives that extended over not decades, but centuries.
00:29:30
Speaker
And we have documentation of their consistent use.
00:29:34
Speaker
from the end of the 16th century through the beginning of the 18th century, which is just really incredible.
00:29:41
Speaker
It really is.
00:29:42
Speaker
And it's something that we don't have for really any other armor produced during the period.
00:29:48
Speaker
We know that many objects had complex afterlives, mostly as objects of display.
00:29:54
Speaker
So, for instance, the Heroes Armory at Schloss Ambrass in Innsbruck was
00:29:58
Speaker
gallery of armors that were presented essentially as heroic predecessors to Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol.
00:30:06
Speaker
But most armors that survived did survive as objects of display or they survived in sort of different socioeconomic contexts, as I mentioned, as objects that had very long working lives because of
00:30:20
Speaker
of economic need.
00:30:22
Speaker
But these objects, these jousting armors from the court of Saxony survived as both objects of display and participants in really a working tournament tradition, a living tournament tradition that would bring them out and sort of animate them periodically throughout 200 years.
00:30:43
Speaker
So by the end of this, in the 18th century, we're talking about a very anachronistic
00:30:50
Speaker
of undertaking, right?
00:30:51
Speaker
I mean, this is, you know, not too long before a period of military history that we all have, you know, a very strong set of mental imagery around, which is the American Revolution, right?
00:31:05
Speaker
And it's not exactly a time of charging, you know, knights on horses with lances, right?
00:31:13
Speaker
I mean, gunpowder was far and away the dominant military technology.
00:31:20
Speaker
what would it have meant for someone to participate in a joust in the early 18th century?
00:31:28
Speaker
What was the significance of that?
00:31:30
Speaker
I think it continued to be a declaration of bravery, of martial prowess.
00:31:35
Speaker
It also had to do with lineage because as you mentioned, it was extremely anachronistic.
00:31:39
Speaker
It was very much about the history of the electors and at that point, kings of Saxony because this is in the court of August II, the Strong, who is both elector and Duke of Saxony, but also King of Poland.
00:31:54
Speaker
So he's establishing a broader royal lineage for his family and essentially telegraphing this
00:32:00
Speaker
this long and illustrious past, the chivalric identity that he's inherited.
00:32:05
Speaker
So it's nostalgia.
00:32:06
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:32:08
Speaker
And, you know, that's something when I write about these objects, I think by the 18th century we can safely use the term nostalgia, but it's so difficult because it happens even by the end of the 16th century when these objects are made.
00:32:20
Speaker
You know, the tournament, as we mentioned, is waning.
00:32:22
Speaker
So there's a kind of what we would call nostalgia.
00:32:25
Speaker
Nostalgia wasn't invented as a word at that time.
00:32:28
Speaker
So what do we call it?
00:32:30
Speaker
I frequently use the term culture of remembrance or Erinnerungskultur auf Deutsch.
00:32:35
Speaker
So it's this way of conceptualizing this sort of backward-looking interest in chivalric lineages that we see really consistently throughout the early modern era, especially in Central and Northern Europe.
00:32:48
Speaker
Interesting.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:49
Speaker
Okay, but then at a certain point, even those cultures of remembrance had to give way to the modern age, and the role of these armors changed once again.
The Evolution of Armor from Function to Artifact
00:33:04
Speaker
So tell me about what was the next stage in their life after these tournaments had finally ended?
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I think before we jump off to that sort of culmination of the lifetimes of the objects, I think it's important to acknowledge the very last tournament because it really was a turning point.
00:33:20
Speaker
So again, we're in the reign of August the 2nd of Saxony, also King of Poland.
00:33:27
Speaker
He performed feats of strength for his court.
00:33:30
Speaker
And he also, like his predecessors, supported the metallic arts.
00:33:34
Speaker
He was very interested in innovation related to mining and smelting.
00:33:38
Speaker
The tournaments in which these objects participated were actually called the Tournaments of the Four Elements.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so they were essentially theatrical performances.
00:33:46
Speaker
The Four Elements being earth, fire, wind, and water?
00:33:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:49
Speaker
Right.
00:33:50
Speaker
Aristotelian style.
00:33:51
Speaker
Exactly.
00:33:52
Speaker
And this is within sort of a realm of thought that connects really closely to...
00:33:57
Speaker
sort of ongoing scholarship like the Making a Knowing Project, this idea of the interest in science and the way that the arts and sciences sort of all come together culturally at this time in what we would consider the early Enlightenment era.
00:34:10
Speaker
And so these armors that had come from the late 16th century tournament tradition
00:34:15
Speaker
then get sort of reappropriated as representations of the prowess of the Saxon sort of knowledge of fire, the knowledge of the elements, the ability to manipulate natural resources in sort of service of the dukes and later kings.
00:34:33
Speaker
So a sort of celebration of technological achievement or alchemical knowledge or...
00:34:40
Speaker
Also alchemy.
00:34:41
Speaker
It's interesting because the same Dukes of Saxony who have these wire drawing benches and other sorts of objects like this, they also have alchemical stoves that recent research has shown were actually used.
00:34:55
Speaker
So there's a lot of tinkering happening at this court.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:59
Speaker
Which is so interesting because you think about this idea of science as sort of a genteel, non-bellicose practice, but then you think about it as it's embodied in the achievements of smiths, like the armorers who made the Saxon works, whose names we know.
00:35:15
Speaker
It's like the von Speyer workshop, Wolf and Peta.
00:35:20
Speaker
They were the Lockheids and Raytheons of their day.
00:35:23
Speaker
Exactly.
00:35:24
Speaker
And also the Maseratis, because they're objects of desire, they're objects of wealth, of power.
00:35:29
Speaker
So it's really interesting to think about this last hurrah of the armors in a certain way to be still closely connected to this idea of innovation, of hope for the future.
00:35:39
Speaker
um so they really become sort of fulcra between an early modern past and what for august the second in his court was sort of an enlightenment present so within four years of that tournament of the tournament of the four elements um
00:35:56
Speaker
August talks with his advisors and essentially establishes what is one of the first predecessors of the modern museum.
00:36:04
Speaker
So he seeks to consolidate the collections of the Duchy of Saxony into what would become the Historicus Museum in Dresden, the Grünes Gewalbe, the Green Vaults, which we all know very well because of recent events and also from the Making Marvels exhibition at the Met.
00:36:24
Speaker
And it's interesting because these armors and most of the princely arsenal of Saxony immediately get rolled in by 1723 into this larger sort of modernizing what we would consider almost a museum mission.
00:36:38
Speaker
Amazing.
00:36:38
Speaker
So, I mean, really within just a few years after they were still commissioned and in use, they're treated as collectibles or museum items, maybe not in the same sense that we have of a museum item, but something akin to that.
00:36:54
Speaker
Exactly, and the room that they had inhabited really since their creation, what's called the Balian Kammer in the Saxon Arsenal, sadly that building has since been destroyed mostly.
00:37:08
Speaker
But this is a space that was intended for the arming of knights for the tournament.
00:37:13
Speaker
It existed adjacent to the tournament grounds, so knights could ride directly out into the lists from the arsenal itself.
00:37:20
Speaker
But that was a space that really was a display space for its entire life.
00:37:24
Speaker
So when the armors weren't in use, they were hung on the walls.
00:37:27
Speaker
As I mentioned, the mounted armors of the Dukes of Saxony were flanked by these ranks of tournament armors that would have been worn by their courtiers.
00:37:36
Speaker
And that space was essentially immediately translated into a display space.
00:37:42
Speaker
in the early 18th century where the armors of the Dukes of Saxony could form, as we mentioned at other courts, sort of an armory of heroes.
00:37:52
Speaker
It's a ghostly lineage, a standing evocation that evokes the physicality of the predecessors of the ruling family.
00:38:00
Speaker
Who was walking into these spaces to look at these ghostly armors?
00:38:05
Speaker
Many people.
00:38:06
Speaker
So during the 18th century and really even by the 17th century, you could come on the invitation of the Duke.
00:38:14
Speaker
So we have these great travelers accounts.
00:38:17
Speaker
There's one that is really one of my favorites.
00:38:20
Speaker
It's by Tobias Boynton from 1674.
00:38:23
Speaker
And he describes walking into this arsenal space and he literally gives us the play by play of what you would encounter as you're walking through the space.
00:38:31
Speaker
So he says, you know,
00:38:33
Speaker
There's one white armor, which is the steel, the brightened steel polished armor that we imagine.
00:38:39
Speaker
And then next to that is a black armor, an armor painted with black paint to darken it.
00:38:44
Speaker
So there's this sort of rhythmic display of jousting armors in black and white that marches through the space.
00:38:51
Speaker
And those are mounted on the wall behind the mounted figures, which literally are on mannequins and in many cases also with horse mannequins.
00:39:01
Speaker
of the armors for man and horse of the Dukes of Saxony.
00:39:04
Speaker
So it's a space that really, I think, for people who have been to great collections of arms and armor, maybe in Vienna or Madrid or Innsbruck, it's a space that seems very familiar to us.
00:39:16
Speaker
And even if you imagine walking into the galleries at the Metropolitan Museum and you're met with
00:39:22
Speaker
you know, some of the great armors in particular, there's a 16th century Saxon armor at the head of our equestrian group.
00:39:28
Speaker
You can start to sort of conceptualize what the space would have been like.
00:39:32
Speaker
Right, right.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
So the impression that these armors were supposed to make was supposed to be received by perhaps, you know, members of the broader public.
00:39:45
Speaker
Not just, this wasn't just courtiers walking around and telling stories about
00:39:50
Speaker
the days of yore.
00:39:52
Speaker
This was also sort of a public display of the strength of the
00:39:57
Speaker
It was, and from 1832 onwards.
00:40:01
Speaker
So it exists for, as we mentioned, from 1723 to 1832, essentially as a princely Kunstkammer, or art collection.
00:40:13
Speaker
So we're thinking about it as still very much a note of the court, but a note of the court to which people can be invited to reiterate this powerful lineage that the dukes and later kings are
00:40:25
Speaker
are claiming.
00:40:27
Speaker
But from 1832, the museum is founded as a modern museum.
00:40:33
Speaker
So you get the foundation of the Johann Neum, the historicist museum in Dresden.
00:40:37
Speaker
And that really inaugurates a new conceptualization of those objects because, you know, their lives as tournament objects are really long over at that point.
00:40:48
Speaker
And also to a certain extent, it positions them as an inheritance of the state, the newly sort of nascent state of Saxony, the idea of maybe a regional identity in addition to a courtly identity.
00:41:08
Speaker
But really from that point until...
00:41:11
Speaker
the end of the First World War, they continue to inhabit the space that they had lived in from 1580 onward.
00:41:19
Speaker
So it's really interesting to think about all of these iterations that change conceptually the way that the armors are presented and displayed, but really that remain the same.
00:41:29
Speaker
Right, it's really the context changing around them.
00:41:33
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:34
Speaker
The reception is changing, but there's an immense continuity in terms of the space.
00:41:40
Speaker
And yeah, I think that's so unusual and sort of poetic.
00:41:44
Speaker
It really is.
00:41:45
Speaker
I mean, it emphasizes what's so interesting to me about so many old objects, which is this sense of a continuum between the past and the present.
00:41:55
Speaker
And it's remarkable when an object has stayed in the same place physically, because emotionally, at least for me, that really drives home the point that that object really has been there the whole time.
00:42:10
Speaker
On a recent episode, I spoke with a furniture dealer, Frank Levy, who had purchased a set of 16 chairs and two sofas that were made in New York in the early 19th century.
00:42:25
Speaker
and he bought them out of the family.
00:42:27
Speaker
And a couple of the chairs needed a little bit of restoration.
00:42:32
Speaker
So he drove them over the Queensborough Bridge to his restorer.
00:42:37
Speaker
And at some point while he was on the Queensborough Bridge, the thought occurred to him that this was perhaps the first time that these chairs had ever left the island of Manhattan.
00:42:49
Speaker
And that's sort of a remarkable story
00:42:53
Speaker
I mean, on the one hand, it's very unremarkable.
00:42:56
Speaker
Of course, you know, it's no big deal.
00:43:00
Speaker
You're moving these chairs a couple of miles.
00:43:02
Speaker
On the other hand, you know, just to realize that for hundreds of years, this object has been situated in this particular place as people have lived and died and been born around it.
00:43:16
Speaker
And I think in that way, those objects that have sort of consistent context, at least spatial context, for such a long time, they have sort of accretive layers of identity.
00:43:28
Speaker
It becomes like geological strata in many ways.
00:43:32
Speaker
Because we think about provenance as a history of motion.
00:43:36
Speaker
When we trace the provenance of objects, we imagine it as the object moving around through space and time.
00:43:42
Speaker
But for these objects that have long histories within a single space or a single collection, I think it's interesting to think about the ways that personae and events and memories can become imprinted on those objects.
00:43:57
Speaker
And they're no less dynamic for having been in the same spot for hundreds of years.
00:44:03
Speaker
You know, the black armors that I mentioned in the display of the Saxon Arsenal, one of those was also acquired by
00:44:10
Speaker
by Bashford Dean from the then Prince of Saxony Ernst Heinrich in 1926.
00:44:16
Speaker
And it has, you know, thick layers of black paint, which would have dated to the period.
00:44:22
Speaker
That's what it would have looked like.
00:44:23
Speaker
But it's been repainted, obviously, over the course of its lifetime.
00:44:26
Speaker
And on the shield that protects the jousters left side, it actually has layers of names painted onto the shield underneath the layers of black paint.
00:44:38
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:44:39
Speaker
So each layer is a new name?
00:44:41
Speaker
Is a new name of a user who would have used it during probably the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
00:44:49
Speaker
So it has literally these strata of identity that have been superimposed onto the object itself.
00:44:56
Speaker
So in that way, you know, armors, I think, have a particular ability to become embodiments or vessels for identity because of this physical form that they take.
00:45:07
Speaker
They become a person standing in front of you very easily.
00:45:10
Speaker
But in the case of these armors, because they were worn by successive generations of people, I think they have, you know, this amazing depth of meaning.
00:45:20
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:22
Speaker
And they're a lot more durable than textiles, so it makes them a little easier to study.
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:45:29
Speaker
I think the textile thing is an interesting point because, you know, so many of these armors, particularly the Saxon-Jostein armors that we're describing,
00:45:39
Speaker
tend to be somewhat plain.
00:45:40
Speaker
The surfaces are somewhat plain.
00:45:42
Speaker
People frequently walk past them because they tend to be very sort of clean lined, very modern looking.
00:45:50
Speaker
Right.
00:45:50
Speaker
But we have to imagine them during the period because they were surrounded by all of these beautiful textiles and felvets and plumed crests.
00:45:58
Speaker
Right.
00:45:59
Speaker
And so the material culture that surrounded them was very sumptuous and lush.
00:46:03
Speaker
And so frequently when we see these objects, and I think that's the case for silver also when we look
00:46:08
Speaker
look at a silver tankard and we have to imagine the the sort of larger visual context that it would have inhabited candlelight yes candlelight um beautiful tablecloths and settings and all of these sorts of objects yeah
00:46:24
Speaker
Hi, everyone.
00:46:25
Speaker
I'm sorry that the interview ends there so abruptly.
00:46:28
Speaker
Unfortunately, we had an audio issue at the very end, so we lost the last couple minutes of our conversation.
00:46:33
Speaker
So just, you know, try to imagine one or two extra incisive questions and brilliant responses.
00:46:38
Speaker
Anyway, thank you so much to Chassica Kirchhoff.
00:46:41
Speaker
You can find her on Instagram at Chassica Feliz.
00:46:44
Speaker
That's C-H-A-S-S-I-C-A-F-E-L-E-S-E.
00:46:49
Speaker
And again, there are images of these armors at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:46:55
Speaker
Stay safe, stay healthy, and keep podcast binging.
00:46:58
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:47:02
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.