ARMI ANTICHE

Bollettino dell’Accademia di San Marciano - Torino

2017
 armi antiche accademia di S. MARCIANO
vessillologia-uniformologia Casella Postale 517
arte e storia militare 10121 Torino

SOMMARIO

R. Franci pag. 5
Riaprono, completamente restaurate, le Sale Giapponesi del
Museo Stibbert

T. Capwell pag. 9
Mail and the Knight in Renaissance Italy. Part I

J. Sensfelder pag. 85
Bronze preserves History: Epitaphs of the Nuremberg
Cemeteries
 9

Mail and the Knight in Renaissance Italy

Part I

Tobias Capwell

Most studies of ‘knightly’ armour in the fifteenth

century deal primarily with the forms, design and
construction of plate armour. The shining steel surfaces,
which transform the wearer into both a powerful weapon
and a living sculpture, are the most obvious aspect of the
equipment of the late medieval and Renaissance man-
at-arms. The plastic qualities of plate armour facilitated
the creation of a kind of artificial human exo-skeleton.
As well as being very distinctive visually, full ‘harness’
had defensive properties quite different from the
predominantly mail and textile armours of the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. This contrast has led
many authors to divide the history of armour into the
familiar ‘Age of Mail’ and ‘Age of Plate’ classifications,
with a convenient ‘Transitional Period’ filling the
chronological gap between c. 1250 and c. 1400 (Fig. 1).
The problem with this idea is that it implies that,
as the use of plate armour increased, the use of mail
decreased; it conjures images of one form of protection
being taken up because it was superior, while the other
was discarded because it had been rendered obsolete. This
is not what actually happened. Mail was too useful as a
defensive material to be simply abandoned. Furthermore,
plate armour was not introduced as a replacement for
mail. It is true that by 1400 mail was often no longer
the most externally-dominant or most visually obvious
10

Fig. 1 − Detail from The Triumph of Fame by Lorenzo Costa, c.

1490. S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna.
Photo of Tobias Capwell.
 11

protective material in use, but it remained important

well into the sixteenth century.
Not only was mail used to cover the areas of the
body to which plate would not normally extend – the
underarms, backs of the legs, inside surfaces of the
elbows, and the groin – it also persisted as a second
layer of defence worn under plate armour. An important
demonstration that the ‘Age of Mail/Age of Plate’ way
of thinking is flawed is, as we shall see in this series of
articles, the fact that Italian men-at-arms, as well as
others elsewhere in Europe, often wore full shirts of mail
under their cuirasses throughout at least the first half of
the fifteenth century, and possibly later.
The story of the evolution of armour was not one
of transition from mail to plate, but rather of the ever-
increasing reinforcement of defences; new forms of plate
armour were added to augment existing mail and textile
armour, which was itself adjusted to work well with the
new augmentations. Layering plates over mail, which
was in turn covering padded textile, created armour with
a much greater range of protective characteristics and
capabilities. The plate elements were perfectly suited to
resist concussive assault and added a level of resistance
to piercing, puncturing attacks which had previously
posed a serious threat to warriors armoured exclusively
with linen and mail armour. At the same time, should
the plate be pierced by an especially forceful, well-aimed
blow, the mail was there underneath to ‘net’ the point of
the penetrating weapon and prevent it from continuing
into the wearer’s body.
As well as exploring some of the finer functional
principles of armour in the 1400s, an examination of
12

the use of mail in conjunction with full plate armour

also serves as a reminder of the essential social role of
armour as fashion statement. Fashion design involves
its own priorities which need have nothing whatever
to do with functionality. Certain armour features may
have existed simply to create a pleasing silhouette or
visual association. For this reason a precise functional
justification for certain features might be unnecessary, as
they could quite possibly have existed purely for artistic
or decorative reasons. Mail is a fascinating and beguiling
material, its distinctive reflective, acoustic and tactile
qualities captivate the senses, making it an essential aspect
of armour as a rich, dramatic form of clothing quite apart
from any protective contribution it might make. To the
eye, it adds dynamic, liquid movement to an otherwise
solid metal carapace. To the ear, it layers a loud rhythmic
clamour over the clicking cadence of the articulated steel
plates. In the hand, it flows like fine cloth while also
being hard and metallic. Mail is protective, but it is also
tremendously theatrical.
This series of articles, of which this piece is the
first, will focus specifically on armour in Italy. Here mail
played its most prominent role in knightly equipment
during the fifteenth century. Even as the art of plate
armour-making reached its zenith in Quattrocento Italy,
mail continued to have crucial functional and aesthetic
applications. Each of the articles in this series will look
at one area of the mail system employed by Italian men-
at-arms during the 1400s, tracing its development,
raising questions about its practical and/or aesthetic
functions, and exploring the ways in which each piece
was distinctively Italian.
 13

Mail ‘Sabatons’

One of the most characteristic mail elements found

on domestic Italian armour from the late fourteenth
through the early sixteenth century are the defences for
the feet, which, for a lack of a better term, will be here
referred to as mail sabatons. This is not entirely satisfactory,
since the term sabaton tends to conjure up images of foot
armour constructed of articulated metal plates. In the
course of addressing the not insubstantial challenge of
protecting the feet, interactions between mail and plate
were inevitable, just as they were elsewhere on the body;
we will presently also encounter sabatons with both mail
and plate elements. However of primary interest for
purposes here are the seemingly insubstantial ‘sabatons’
of mail only, a fashion rarely found outside Italy and one
that perhaps had much more to do with visual effect than
with practicality. We will look first at the origins of mail
sabatons and how they developed during the fifteenth-
century. This outline of the stylistic evolution will be
followed by a discussion of possible methods of wear,
a topic which might seem to be of minor importance,
but which actually (being surprisingly elusive) is useful
since it requires us to consider the physical properties of
the materials involved. It demands that we be thorough
in our exploration of the evidence, ensuring that we
understand all aspects of it, rather than just glossing
over certain details because they appear at first glance to
be unimportant. Persuading a flap of mail to fit closely
around the foot in a comfortable, dependable, and
serviceable way is not necessarily as straightforward as it
might seem.
14

Early History
It is tempting to assume that the mail foot defences
of the fifteenth century must in some way have descended
from the mail chausses with integral foot covers worn
in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Chausses often covered the fronts and sides of the legs
and feet only, being cross-laced around the back of the
leg and under the foot, but by c. 11501 they could be
constructed as full stockings or ‘hosen’ of mail, complete
with integral feet. Chausses of this type remained in
use until the late fourteenth century in Italy; as more
substantial forms of leg armour were introduced – of
quilted textile, hardened and/or splinted leather, and
metal – they were simply worn over the mail chausses,
which formed a protective foundation. It might therefore
seem reasonable to assume that the mail sabatons of the
fifteenth century were vestigial of these earlier forms of
mail armour. However this does not appear to be the
case.
Mail chausses with integral feet seem to have been
worn in Italy until around 1360. Up to this point they
are found illustrated on the funerary monuments of
Italian men-at-arms, worn under poleyns and greaves of
leather and/or metal; some form of cuisse was probably
also employed, but the long skirts of the coat of plates
and mail shirt invariably hide them from view in effigial
depictions. Good examples of this set-up are found on
the effigies of Giovanni di Castruccio Castracane degli
Antelminelli (d. 1343; S. Francesco, Pisa) and Johann
Huler de Egran (d. 1359; S. Romano, Lucca)2.

1  Blair 1958, p. 28.

2  Boccia 1982, tav. 24.
 15

However after 1350 it was becoming more

common for the chausses to extend only to a level
just below the knee, and in this form they survived as
late as the 1380s. These truncated chausses seem to
have been one of the earliest stylistic ancestors of the
mail valances worn on fifteenth century poleyns (see
below). This allowed the lower leg to be sheathed in a
full, closer-fitting greave of leather or metal. The foot
was likewise armoured with hard plates, either in the
form of scales or articulated lames. A good example of
the former is found on the funerary slab of a man-at-
arms of the Obizi or Salamoncelli family (c. 1360; S.
Francesco, Pescia)3, and of the latter on the effigies of
Galeotto Malaspina (d. 1367; S. Remigio, Fosdinovo)4
and Niccolò Acciaiuoli (d. 1365; Certosa di Valdema,
Firenze)5. Articulated sabatons of plate, which provided
more effective protection, soon became dominant, and
seem to be present on the majority of representations
of men-at-arms from the 1360s onwards. The sabaton
appears not at this early stage to have extended up under
the lower edge of the greave, by means of a solid or
articulated tongue section, as was to become common in
the 1400s. This meant that there was a gap over the front
of the ankle. To cover this exposed area, a small panel of
mail was attached to the lower edge of the greave and was
worn over the top of the sabaton. This feature is found
as early as the 1350s, on the funerary slab of Lorenzo
di Niccolò Acciaiuoli (d. 1353; Certosa di Valdema,
Firenze).
3  Boccia 1982, tav. 28.
4  See Boccia, Coelho 1974, pp. 24-37.
5  Boccia 1982, tav. 26, c.
16

Fig. 2 a
 17

Fig. 2 a -2 b −
Thomas Kerrich’s
drawings of the
effigy of Giovanni
di Poggio (d.
after 1391), once
in the church of
San Lorenzo di
Poggio, Lucca; now
destroyed. British
Library, London,
Add. MS. 6728,
fols. 176-7. Fig. 2 b

This monument may be the earliest representation

of the feature that would later evolve into the fifteenth-
century mail sabaton.
An important developmental link between the
mail defences for the legs and feet of the fourteenth
century and those of the fifteenth was once found on
the funerary monument to Giovanni di Poggio (d. after
1391). Now sadly destroyed, this figure was fortunately
recorded by the eighteenth-century artist-antiquarian
Thomas Kerrich, whose drawings of it are now in the
British Library (Fig. 2). Here the subject was shown clad
in a near-complete ‘white’ armour, composed of a bascinet
with ‘Klappvisier’, one-piece breastplate with a skirt of
articulated plates at the front to protect the abdomen
and groin, small spaudlers, three-piece vambraces,
18

Fig. 3 − Effigy of Ernst ‘the Iron’ Archduke of Inner Austria

(d. 1424), c. 1410. Cistercian monastery, Rein, Austria.
Photo of Tobias Capwell.
 19

fingered ‘hourglass’ gauntlets, three-part leg defences and

articulated plate sabatons. Crucially, this armour is early
enough that the accompanying mail elements still figure
prominently in a practical way. What is almost certainly
a long-sleeved mail shirt forms the basic defensive
layer, the sleeves giving primary protection to the inner
surfaces of the arms and secondary reinforcement, under
the plates of the vambraces, to the outer surfaces. An
aventail guards the sides of the face, neck, and tops of
the shoulders, while the hem of the mail coat extends to
mid-thigh, forming a long skirt. Most importantly for
present purposes, functional mail valances at the knees
and nascent mail sabatons are both present. The valances
here serve their original function, covering the gap
between the one-piece poleyn and the greave when the
knee is flexed (see below), while the chink at each ankle
between the lower edge of the greave and the upper edge
of the plate sabaton is filled with a mail panel. The mail
elements for the legs and feet, completely functional in the
1390s, were preserved in a semi- to non-functional form
as stylistic vestiges throughout the fifteenth century.
Short, ‘half-sabatons’ of mail protecting the voids
at the front of the ankles continued to be used into the
first decade of the fifteenth century. They are occasionally
found outside of Italy, notably in the southern German
Lands and the Iberian Peninsula, areas under significant
Italian influence. On the effigy (made c. 1410) of Ernst
‘the Iron’, Archduke of Inner Austria (d. 1424), at the
Cistercian monastery at Rein (Fig. 3), the mail leg and
foot defences are worn in exactly the same manner as on
the lost di Poggio monument.
20

Fig. 4 − St Michael the Archangel, Valencia, c. 1390- 1410.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund 12.192.

Another significant example is a Valencian image

of St. Michael painted around the same time (Fig. 4);
here the poleyn valances have already become decorative,
with the addition of articulation lames and demi-greaves
above them, while the mail pieces at the ankles still serve
to cover the gaps between greaves and plate sabatons.
 21

Although this earliest form of mail sabaton – worn

over a plate sabaton and only extending to a level just
below the ankle – does continue to appear occasionally
into the second half of the fifteenth century6, the Italian
fashion for the wearing them on their own seems to have
started to catch on soon after 1400. As early as around
1403, on the funerary monument to Carlo, Roberto
and Ricardo da Saliceto by Pier Paolo and Jacobello
dalle Masegne (c. 1403; Museo Civico dei Medievale,
Bologna) we find short mail panels being worn on the
lower edge of the greave, but without any other form
of foot armour (Fig. 5); the feet appear otherwise to be
covered only by the leather arming shoe7. Once it was

6  The feature is found, for example, on a cassone panel by

Giovanni di Francesco, c. 1457, now at the Casa Buonaroti in Firenze
(inv. no. 68) and on the effigy of Sir Robert Whittingham (killed
1471 at the Battle of Tewkesbury), which depicts its subject clad in
an Italian export armour (Church of St. John the Baptist, Aldbury,
Hertfordshire).
7  The armed figures on this monument are not effigies of the
deceased individuals, but rather small upright figures placed in front
of two of the corners of the tomb chest.

Fig. 5 − Detail from the

funerary monument to
Carlo, Roberto and Ricardo
da Saliceto Pier Paolo and
Jacobello dalle Masegne,
c. 1403. Museo Civico
Medievale, Bologna, inv. no.
1659.
22

a b

c d

Fig. 6 − a) After the effigy of Marino di Giovanni Cossa, d. 28

October 1418. From the church of St. Caterina, Pisa, now Musée du
Louvre, Paris, inv. no. R.F.1185.

b) After a detail of the Poliptych Quaratesi by Gentile da Fabriano,

Rome, c. 1425. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. no. 887.

c) After a detail of Madonna and Saints by Giovanni Badile, Verona,

c. 1430-40. Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, inv. no. 373.

d) After a detail from a sketchbook of Jacopo Bellini, Venice,

c. 1435-40. Musée de Louvre, Paris, RF1484, fol. 67.
 23

decided, for whatever reason, that plate armour for the

feet was no longer desirable, it was only a small step to
extend the mail to the widest part of the foot. The true
mail sabaton had arrived.

Three-quarter Mail Sabatons, c. 1410-1460

Like their immediate precursors, the partial mail
sabaton from 1410 onwards was stitched with wire through
a line of holes punched along the lower edges of the front
plate of the greave. Extending to the base of the toes,
this new element quickly became a standard ingredient
of the domestic Italian style (Fig. 6). The toe area was left
uncovered, and in most pictorial representations the heel
and a good part of the base of the foot is visible, made
more obvious generally by the presence of a brightly
coloured arming shoe, standing out as brilliant red,
blue, green or white against the dark metallic lustre of
the mail. The leading edge of the mail sabaton was often
decorated with two or three rows of yellow metal links.
The spur was almost always worn underneath rather than
over the mail (the author is aware of only one exception
in the pictorial evidence, a small equestrian relief, Italian
c. 1450, in the reserve collection of the Bodemuseum,
Berlin), and generally no other method of attachment is
shown, apart from the wire stitching to the greave.
It is important to note at this point that mail
armour for the feet did not comprehensively replace plate
sabatons at this or any other time. They were instead one
of the defining characteristics of those particular Italian
armours which made a fashionable statement out of the
extensive, highly visible use of mail, with flowing mail
sleeves, long mail skirts and mail valances at the poleyns.
24

Fig. 7 − Right greave and

mail sabaton from the
‘Avant’ armour, made by
Giovanni da Garavalle
under contract with the
workshop of Giovanni
Corio, Milan, c. 1438-
40. Glasgow Museums,
inv. no. E.1939.65.e.10.

Mail sabatons tend to accompany all of these other mail

elements. Similarly when plate sabatons are worn, mail
tends to be less in evidence elsewhere on the armour– the
valances are usually also omitted, along with, at times,
the sleeves and one of the two mail skirts.
Only one pair of original mail sabatons of this
earlier three-quarter type survive (Fig. 7). They remain
mounted to the greaves of one of the earliest near-
complete armours in the world, an Italian field harness
from Churburg Castle now in the collection of Glasgow
Museums8. (Fig. 8). This armour, probably made between

8  The famous ‘Avant’ armour, after the word, meaning ‘forward’,

inscribed repeatedly on the sides of the breastplate; inv. no.
 25

1438 and 14409, dates from the time when mail sabatons
of the three-quarter, exposed-toe type were at the height
of their popularity. They are made up of thirty-two rows
of links, the last two forward rows formed of copper
alloy rather than iron links, a form of decoration also
found on many of the more detailed depictions in art.
They do not include any special adjustments or shaping
in their construction, being simply rectangular panels of
fine mail, stitched through the lines of holes punched
along the lower edges of the greaves with lengths of wire.
There is no evidence of attachment points to the foot,
although such fastenings must once have existed (see
below). Like those found in some (but by no means all)
of the contemporary images, these extant mail sabatons
were each designed to extend beyond the lower edge of
the greave at the sides of the ankle, carefully fitted so
that they reach down to each side of the sole of the foot
without actually meeting the ground.
Three-quarter mail sabatons seem to have continued
to be worn into the middle of the fifteenth century,
and are still in evidence in the 1450s. However, after
1450 they appear less and less frequently, increasingly
E.1939.65.e. Formerly Churburg Castle, no. 20; see Graf Trapp
1929, pp. 48-55, pl. XXIII; Mann 1956, pp. 2-9; Woosnam-Savage
1990, pp. 5-11; Scalini 1996, pp. 77-78; Joubert 2006, pp. 9-11
(catalogue entry almost certainly written by R. L. Scott himself);
Capwell 2006, pp. 26-29.
9  Although the armour is the product of the Corio workshop,
with most of its parts carrying the marks of Giovanni, Ambrogio,
Bellino and Dionisio Corio, the leg armour is the work of Giovanni
da Garavalle, who in 1438 was contracted to make leg armour under
Giovanni Corio. See Boccia 1982a, p. 282.
26

Fig. 8a - 8b − Field
armour, made in
Milan by Giovanni,
Ambrogio, Bellino
and Dionisio Corio,
with Giovanni da
Garavalle, c. 1438-40.
Glasgow Museums,
inv. no. E.1939.65.e.
The helmet and right
gauntlet are authentic
but did not originally
belong to this armour,
while the left gauntlet
was made in the
twentieth century.

Fig. 8a
 27

supplanted by new designs covering most or all of

the foot forward of the greave. An exceptionally clear
visualisation of this period of co-existence is present
on Francesco Laurana’s triumphal arch for the Castel
Nuovo in Naples (Figs. 9-10), created c. 1450-1458 as
a celebration of the conquest of that kingdom in 1442
by Alfonso of Aragon (1396-1458). This very elaborate
tour de force of the sculptor’s art includes side panels
crowded with armoured figures carved in very high relief,
representing some of the most carefully studied and
realistic illustrations of Italian armour of the period. Each
man-at-arms is unique, just as they would have been in
life, with each armour displaying its own character and
idiosyncrasies. Some figures wear mail sleeves over their
vambraces in the Italian manner, others do not. Most
are equipped with Italian celati, while one central figure

Fig. 8b
28

Fig. 9

Fig. 10
 29

Figs. 9-12 −
Details of the
relief panels of
the triumphal
arch of Alfonso
V of Aragon,
by Francesco
Laurana, c.
1455-8. Castel
Nuovo, Naples.
Fig. 11

Fig. 12
sports a bevor and visored sallet in the West European
fashion. When we turn to the feet, all current fashions in
armoured footwear are represented (Figs. 11-12) – plate
sabatons as well as both partial and full mail sabatons.
Several of the figures also wear what one might call
‘half-sabatons’, something of a role-reversal of the late
fourteenth-century ankle mail and toe-plates approach,
with assemblies of three or four plates which protect the
30

a b c

Fig. 13 −
a) After a detail from a series of drawings of ‘Illustrious Men’, c. 1435-
45. Istituto al Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe, Rome, FN 2818-33.
b) After a detail from Constantine’s Victory Over Maxentius, from the
Legend of the Cross fresco cycle by Piero Della Francesca, 1464-6. S.
Francesco, Arezzo.
c) After a detail from The Three Archangels with Tobias, by Francesco
Botticini, c. 1490. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

top of the foot, while the middle area and toes are covered
only with mail. It should be noted that, although they
are still in evidence at this point, fast approaching 1460,
partial mail sabatons are less common- the majority of
examples illustrated on the triumphal arch in Naples are
of the full-foot form.

Full Mail Sabatons, c. 1450-1500+

While the straight-edged partial mail sabaton
clearly was widespread and common enough to become
recognisable as a classic attribute of the domestic Italian
 31

style, from as early as the 1430s another form was

developing, extending beyond the widest part of the foot
and beginning to be brought to a rounded point (Fig.
13). Early illustrations of this form are found the Libro di
Giusto, executed by an unidentified Italian artist probably
c. 1435-1450 and comprising a series of drawings of
‘famous men’ from Biblical, Classical and Medieval
history10. Here this new design is found side-by-side with
plate sabatons and partial mail sabatons of the rectangular
form. Twenty or so years later, Piero della Francesca
included something similar in his monumental Legend
of the True Cross frescos in Arezzo, in which warriors clad
in armour all ‘antica intermingle in battle with mounted
men-at-arms wearing state-of-the-art full plate armour of
Piero’s own time. The mail sabatons of several of the latter
figures do not yet cover the whole foot, but are instead
drawn to a sharp point, so that they at least follow the line
of the foot itself, which is covered by a pointed arming
shoe. The same sort of design is also found being worn by
St. Michael in Francesco di Giovanni Botticini’s The Three
Archangels with Tobias, painted around 1490 (Galleria
degli Uffizi, Firenze). Here the points of the sabatons are
blunted rather than sharply pointed as at Arezzo, while
the edges are accentuated with three rows of yellow metal
links, the mail standing out very dramatically against the
bright red arming shoes.
10  Roma, Istituto Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe, inv. no. FN 2818-
2833. These drawings were taken from the enormous fresco cycle of
three hundred figures (now lost) painted in the sala theatri at the
palace of Cardinal Giordano Orsini (d. 1438) on the Monte Giordano
in Rome, primarily by Masolino da Panicale. The work was begun in
the late 1420s and completed in 1432.
32

Fig. 14 − After a
detail from Saint
George, by the
Master of Santa
Maria degli
Angeli a Gardone
val Trompia, c.
1500. Pinacoteca
Tosio Martinegro,
Brescia, inv. no.
306.

Despite the fact that partial mail foot defences

clearly persisted right to the end of the fifteenth century,
in one form or another, by 1460 at the very latest, and
probably earlier, mail sabatons that covered the whole
foot forward of the greave had taken over as the most
common and typical design (Fig. 14). Most depictions
agree that the heel remained uncovered, implying that in
most instances the mail sabatons continued to be wired
to the lower edge of the front plate of the greave.
The author is aware of three authentic full mail
sabatons surviving in museum collections, one pair and
one single (the mate to which is a modern composition).
The latter is found on the Italian export armour made by
Tomasso and Antonio Missaglia, with assistance from Pier
Innocenzo da Faerno, for Elector Palatine Frederick I, ‘the
Quarrelsome’, later called ‘the Victorious’ (1425-1476)
(Fig. 15). This armour11, far from being a standard Italian

11  Vienna, Hofjagd– und Rüstkammer, inv. no. A2.

 33

armour, incorporates German design features, including

a close-fitting great bascinet, popular in Germany and
western Europe but rarely used in Italy itself, symmetrical
pauldrons with besagews, a longer skirt, German-style
tassets, and uniquely, the foot plates for a pair of boot
stirrups with long, attenuated toe extensions or poulaines.
The traditional display of these solid stirrup plates fitted
to the feet in the manner of sabatons has always hidden
the mail sabatons underneath, which are never seen in
photographs of this important armour. Their presence is
quite unexpected, since mail sabatons generally seem to
have been less popular outside of Italy.
One of these sabatons is original and homogeneous,
while the other is a modern (probably twentieth-century)
assembly of old mail of three different types, attached
to each other with authentic links which have had their
rivets carefully removed. The authentic sabaton (Fig.
16), currently mounted on the right greave, is made up
of fine, heavy mail of a high quality. The individual links
(Fig. 17) are of round section, with an inside diameter
of 4mm and an external diameter of just under 7mm.
Interestingly this piece has no shaping over the front
of the foot– no contraction links over the wearer’s toes.
Instead the maker has created a subtle and very graceful
taper along the edges, adding contraction links only at the
very edges and alternating them side to side to that the
shaping is not at all obvious. The taper is just pronounced
enough to allow the edge to follow the line of the foot,
where an untapered piece of mail would quickly descend
to the floor beyond the base of the toes. The piece is
decorated with three rows of copper alloy links forming
a now fragmentary border around the edges.
34

Fig. 15
 35

Figs. 15-17 − Field

armour of Frederick
the Victorious, made
by Tomasso and
Antonio Missaglia
and Pier Innocenzo
da Faerno, Milan,
c. 1450-5. Hofjagd–
und Rüstkammer,
Vienna, inv. no. A2.
Fig. 16

Fig. 17
36

Fig. 18
 37

Fig. 19 Fig. 20
Figs. 18-21 −
Composite field
armour, made by
Antonio Missaglia,
Giovanni Negroli,
and others, Milan,
c.1450-60.
Museo Diocesano,
Mantua, inv.
no. B1 (per
gent. conc. del
Museo Diocesano
F. Gonzaga -
Mantova).

Fig. 21

The other two surviving full-toed mail sabatons

are a pair, found on an Italian composite armour dating
from c. 1460, preserved in an Italian church as a votive
offering since its working lifetime. ‘B1’, from the series
of composite field armours displayed for centuries at
the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Curtatone,
near Mantua (Fig. 18), is one of the most beautiful and
38

at the same time most typical of the surviving Italian

armours. It is closely comparable to innumerable
pictorial representations of armour of this style, by
Mantegna, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Piero della
Francesca, and a great many others. It is the only armour
to retain its original mail valances (see below), which are
complimented by the equally fortunate survival of the
mail sabatons. Both the valances and the sabatons were
present on the original Sanctuary figures before they were
dismounted in the 1930s; they are certain therefore to be
as original and authentic as any of the other armour parts
at Mantua12. The sabatons of B1 are each composed of
a broadly oblong section of mail which extends to the
base of the toes. To this is attached a shaped toe-piece,
on which the maker has reduced the number of links per
row moving forward quite rapidly, forming a rounded
toe area that easily conforms to the shape of the front of
the foot. Unlike the Vienna and Glasgow examples, the
B1 sabatons do not extend beyond the edge of the greave
at the sides (Fig. 19); the mail ends where the line of
holes on the greave terminates. Just as is the case with the
other survivors, at Mantua there is no evidence of how
the mail pieces were attached to the foot. To attempt
an explanation of this question, we must return to the
pictorial evidence.

12  See Mann 1930, pp. 125-126, and Mann 1938, p. 329.
 39

Methods of Attachment

The small technical details which allow armour to

work well were not always of interest to artists. Although
late medieval and Renaissance depictions of men in
armour are often very well-observed, small details are
often omitted. In many cases this might occur because the
artist felt that the particular work of art did not require
fine technical delineation in order to serve its intended
function. In other instances it could be explained by the
probability that certain functional necessities, such as
joint articulation rivets, were not meant to be appreciated
as overt visual aspects of the armour in the first place13.
Technical features required for the functioning of the
armour were often de-emphasised visually; they were
not always expressly intended to be seen. Therefore they
would often be omitted from idealised representations
which strove to portray subjects as they were wished
to be rather than what they really were. The fastening
method employed on a pair of mail sabatons worn as part

13  The very famous gilt copper alloy effigy of Edward the Black
Prince (1330-1376) embodies one of the most accurate and well-
observed three-dimensional depictions of late fourteenth-century
armour, and yet, while some of the most prominent technical details
have been included, such as the lines of rivets on the great helm
placed under the head, almost all articulation rivets on the armour
have been omitted. The reason for this may have been simply that the
articulation rivets were a functional necessity on the actual armour
but were not intended to form a special visual feature. Instead, their
removal from the effigy serves to accentuate the smooth, graceful
forms and clean lines of the idealised armour. The author would like
to thank Robert Macpherson for this observation.
40

Fig. 22
 41

of a fifteenth-century Italian field armour was exactly the

kind of detail which was routinely omitted.
When an armour is fully assembled on the body,
a great many technical details relating to its internal
workings are obscured. This presents an obvious
problem when looking for technical information in
artistic depictions. Any attempt to address the question
of mail sabaton fastenings really requires a view of the
underside of the armoured subject’s feet, a perspective
we are rarely offered. The writer’s hopes were, a number
of years ago, briefly pricked during an encounter with
Piero della Francesca’s ‘Montefeltro Altarpiece’ (1472-
1474; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano). In the lower right
corner the patron of the work, the famous condottiere
Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1422-1482)
is shown kneeling before the Virgin and Child clad in
a full armour (Fig. 22), a beautifully rendered Milanese
example, brightly polished, with each bolt, rivet, buckle

Figs. 22-23 −
Detail from
Virgin and
Child with
Saints, by Piero
della Francesca,
c. 1472-5.
Pinacoteca di
Brera, Milan,
Nap. 516/Reg.
Cron. 180.
Fig. 23
42

Fig. 24 − Intarsia panel representing an armour cabinet,

“Frederico’s Life and Attributes”, Federico’s Studiolo,
Benedetto da Maiano and Florentine intarsiatori, c. 1476.
Ducal Palace, Urbino, inv. 1990 INT 38.
 43

and strap accurately reproduced. Kneeling figures in

armour are not unknown elsewhere in fifteenth-century
art, but they are somewhat rare. Examples such as this
one, in which the soles of the feet are clearly visible,
are even rarer. Therefore when the author spied a strap
descending down from the mail sabaton (Fig. 23), it
was difficult not to hope that it represented an answer
to the sabaton question. However it did not take long
upon close inspection to realise that this strap belonged
to the spur worn under the Duke’s mail sabaton, and
not to the sabaton itself. Sadly, this great painting, which
contains one of the most famous Italian Renaissance
representations of an armoured knight, is devoid of any
hint of how the armour for the feet might be held in
place.
Another unusual representation of an armour
belonging to Federico is found on one of the trompe l’oeil
intarsia cabinet doors in the Duke’s study at his palace
in Urbino (Fig. 24). Here the Ducal armour is depicted
disassembled and arranged in and around the cabinet
behind the door. One empty greave and unfastened spur
have escaped the confines of the cabinet itself and are
arranged with apparent carelessness on the floor. Yet
despite the disassembled state of the armour, with the
mail sabaton spilling down from the lower edge of the
greave, once again we are disappointed, as no fastening
details can be seen.
Before progressing further, it may be useful to
speculate on the various ways one could in theory hold
a piece of mail in place on the foot, keeping the one
clearly established fact in mind – that the top of the mail
sabaton was usually stitched with wire through a line of
44

holes along the lower edge of the greave front. We must

also limit ourselves to methods that would not require
any special modifications to the mail itself, since none of
the five surviving examples retain any sign of the method
of their attachment. Whatever it was, it must have been
something that could degrade and be lost without leaving
any visible sign of its presence on the remaining metal
parts.

1) Sewing. Could not the mail have simply been

sewn to the arming shoe? Such a solution
would certainly work, and would produce
the visual appearance found in many pictorial
representations. However, it would eliminate the
need to wire the mail onto the greaves, and indeed
would mean that, in conjunction with wiring, the
arming shoes would, along with the sabatons, be
permanently attached to the greaves. Of course
the mail could theoretically be sewn on every time
the armour was donned, with the stitching being
slashed as part of the disarming process, but even
for a knight of high status with many obedient
and accommodating servants to carry out such
awkward tasks, this seems an inelegant solution.
2) Lacing. There is evidence from as far back as the
twelfth century of mail foot coverings being cross-
laced under the foot14. There is no practical reason
why fifteenth-century mail sabatons could not

14  Depicted on the late twelfth-century statue of Roland on the

portico of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Matricolare, Verona.
 45

also have been tied down in this way, although

one would have thought that the procedure would
have yielded a visual attribute so prominent that
artists would have been hard-pressed to ignore it.
3) Strapping. Certainly leather straps under the foot
were commonly used to keep plate sabatons in
place. There is no reason why this same method
could not be applied to sabatons of mail. In the
case of plate sabatons, one strap often passes under
the narrowest part of the foot forward of the heel,
along roughly the same line as the spur strap, while
another, often a split Y-strap, keeps the toe-plate
from lifting up off the foot.
4) Pointing. Stout arming points were routinely
attached to the arming doublet and hose to
hold the various armour parts in place. We must
therefore consider their use on the arming shoes
as well.
Taking into account the fact that many artists
simply omitted the details of attachment from their
otherwise very precise portrayals of armed figures, and
having established the sorts of devices we expect might
have been employed, we may turn to the pictorial
evidence for mail sabaton attachment, such as it is.
The earlier partial mail sabatons, extending to the
widest part of the foot only, seem designed with ease of
construction and attachment in mind. They required no
special shaping, and the problem of covering the round
toe was avoided. Straps under the foot ought to be all that
was required. And on a small painted panel depicting
46

Fig. 25 Fig. 26

Fig. 25 − After a detail from The Martyrdom of St. Biagio by Giovanni

Antonio da Pesaro, c. 1425-35. Palazzo di Venezia, Rome, inv. no.
P.V.10225.
Fig. 26 − After a detail from Prince Federico da Montefeltro and
his Son, by Pedro Berruguete, c. 1480-1. Galleria Nazionale delle
Marche, Urbino.

the martyrdom of St. Biagio by Giovanni Antonio da

Pesaro, dating from c. 1425-1440 (Palazzo di Venezia,
Rome, P.V.10225) that appears to be what we find (Fig.
25). Crucially one of the men-at-arms in the foreground
is clearly not wearing spurs, and yet straps (or laces)
passing under his feet are still visible.
This unique example is the only hint for the
attachment of partial mail sabatons known to the
author. When investigating the slightly later full-foot
type however, more clues present themselves. The most
 47

Fig. 27 − After a detail from The Virgin and Child with Saints,
by Lorenzo Costa and Gianfrancesco Maineri, c. 1499. National
Gallery, London, inv. no. NG1119.

common and obvious attachment feature, though it too

is often omitted, is an arming point placed on the arming
shoe over or near the large toe (Fig. 26). The point then
passes through the mail and is used to tie it down. It
is important to note that this method alone probably
would not be sufficient – the mail would still be free to
slop from side to side in an unacceptable way. It must
also have been affixed at the sides.
Yet it is a fact that many depictions appear to
suggest that wiring to the front of the greave and an
arming point at the toe were all that was used; the figure
of St George in The Virgin and Child with Saints (Fig. 27)
by Lorenzo Costa and Gianfrancesco Maineri, c. 1499
48

Fig. 28 − Detail from The Triumph of Fame, by Lorenzo Costa, c.

1490. S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna.
Photo of Tobias Capwell.

(National Gallery, London, NG1119) is a good example,

as indeed is, apparently, the Montefeltro altarpiece in
Milano. Such an idea is hard to accept.
This method would be clumsy, ineffectual, and
once again inelegant. Toe points were clearly used, but
only on the full-foot mail sabaton; the author has never
come across evidence of their use on the earlier partial
 49

type15. When toe points were adopted, it seems reasonable

to suggest that they simply formed an addition to the
existing devices which held the mail down at the sides,
since the toe area was the only part of the piece which
could not be secured by means of straps. Incidentally
it is probably safe to eliminate stitching as an option,
simply because if it was being employed the arming
points would have been unnecessary. The presence of the
arming point at the toe strongly implies that the sabaton
was designed to be easily removed from the foot when
the greave was taken off.
(Fig. 28) If small straps under the narrowest and
widest parts of the foot were the way the earlier partial
mail sabatons were secured, it seems reasonable to
suggest that this method would continue to be used after
the mail had been extended to cover the toes. However
straps could not be used to hold the toe area in place,
so an arming point was added to the system. Points at
the toe were not a new idea – they had been previously
used to secure the toe-lames of plate sabatons in the
fourteenth century16, and are occasionally found during
the fifteenth century as well17.
15  In the author’s book (see Capwell 2006), the reconstruction of
the ‘Avant’ armour (p. 29) incorrectly shows that armour’s partial
foot mail sabatons as being pointed to the arming shoes. There
seems, in fact, to be no evidence of pointing until the introduction of
the full-foot form. This mistake was the author’s own and not that of
the reconstruction artist.
16  The toe of the single surviving sabaton of the boy’s armour, c.
1390-1400, from Chartres Cathedral, now in the Musée de Chartres,
is pierced with a pair of holes for pointing to the arming shoe.
17  For example, on the effigy of Don Garcia Osorio (d. 1502),
c. 1490-1500, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. no. A.48-
1910.
50

Fig. 29 − After
a detail from
La Madonna
della Vittoria,
by Andrea
Mantegna, c.
1495. Musée du
Louvre, Paris,
inv. no. 369.

(Fig. 29) A mail sabaton side-strap may be present in

the donor portrait of Francesco II Gonzaga, 4th Marquess
of Mantua, painted by Andrea Mantegna in 1495 to
commemorate the claimed victory over the invading
French at the battle of Fornovo (Louvre, Paris, inv. no.
369). Here the Marquess wears a half-sabaton composed
of four downward-lapping plates, with the forward part
of the foot protected by very finely woven mail. The spur
strap is painted as a dark band edged with narrow lighter
lines on either side. Upon close examination, a similar
band may be discerned a few centimetres from the toe.
There may be another narrow strap further back, just
forward of the lowermost lame of the plate defence, but
it is difficult to be sure.
Apart from the actual fastenings themselves,
linings for the mail sabatons should also be considered.
Many armour parts were once backed with padded
textile, but being made of organic materials such linings
 51

rarely survive. When a lining does remain, its survival is

inevitably due to the fact that it has been protected inside
something substantial, like a helmet. Sometimes extant
leather lining-bands remaining inside armour pieces and
exhibiting stitching holes tell us that a lining once existed
there. However if a lining was only glued in place, or if
in the case of mail armour stitched delicately in position
directly to the metal parts, all traces of its existence
can easily be lost. Mail, having notable weight but also
considerable flexibility, is a notoriously disobedient
material. However when attached to a lining, it ‘does as
it is told’, becoming fixed into the desired shape and area
of coverage, and ceasing to expand and contract as mail
otherwise will.
A mail sabaton lining need not have been especially
thick, indeed it cannot have been, since the mail coverings
seem universally to have fitted very closely to the foot.
As far as evidence which can be offered for this idea, we
first should observe the way mail is seen to behave in
some of the more realistically painted depictions dating
from the late fifteenth century. Moving forward from
the greave, the edge of the mail sometimes describes
a gentle, controlled curve down to a level just above
the sole of the foot, at which point it follows a path
parallel to the ground down to the toe. One of the best
depictions of this detail is found in a representation of
a warrior saint (Fig. 30) by Francesco and Bernardino
Zaganelli, dated 1499 (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano, inv.
no. 457). In this instance the edges of the mail sabatons
appear to be bound with cord or thread, while the lines
described along the feet strongly suggest a lining (Fig.
31). Furthermore, loops of red thread or very fine cord
52

Figs. 30-31 −
Detail from
The Virgin
and Child
with Saints, by
Francesco and
Bernardino
Zaganelli,
dated 1499.
Pinacoteca di
Brera, Milan.
inv. no. 457.

Fig. 30
 53

Fig. 31

can be seen distributed at regular intervals throughout

the body of the sabaton, again suggesting a lining which
has been carefully couched in place. Fine red arming
points hold down the toes, while what may be two side-
straps (or a single Y-strap) keep the sabaton from slewing
side to side.
In conclusion it seems that Italian mail sabatons
were initially worn, in their squared-off, open-toed form,
only with side-straps, sewn either to the mail itself or
to a lining. This form of attachment was already being
employed on plate sabatons, and is a straightforward and
obvious solution. When the sabatons were extended to
cover the whole foot, from the middle of the fifteenth
century, side-straps probably continued to be employed
with the addition of arming points at the toes. With this
54

development linings could have become more important,

to better confine the mail to a proscribed shape and area
of coverage.

Mail Valances or Balzae

The role of Italian armour as a form of body-art

comes to the fore when we turn our attention to the
mail valances or balzae, short fringes of mail commonly
hung below the main poleyn plates on Italian leg armour.
These pieces were intrinsically Italian– they almost never
appear outside of Italy, except in areas of immediate
Italian influence, such as eastern Spain, and in a few
cases, the Netherlands. They are emblematic of domestic
Italian fashion and set it apart from all other styles.
The Latinate term balzae appears in the 1407
inventory of the armoury at Mantua belonging to the
ruling Gonzaga family18. This document was probably
drawn up shortly after the death of Francesco I Gonzaga,
Marquess of Mantua (1366/7- March 1407), a condottiere
and builder of the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie
at Curtatone, which would later become the repository
of the single most important group of surviving late
fifteenth-century Italian armours. The term is found in
line 38:

18  See Mann 1938a, pp. 239-283.

 55

Viginti paria balzarum ab Arnixiis vetera19.

(‘Twenty pairs of valances for old leg-
harness’)

In his translation of this document Sir James Mann

interpreted ‘balzae’ as ‘fringes’, but noted that the word’s
more literal equivalent is valance (or valence), a term used
to describe various decorative cloth fringes fitted to beds,
windows, shelves, etc. Elsewhere in his writings Mann
employed the term to refer specifically to the mail knee-
fringes found on Italian armour20, and there seems to be
no obvious reason why this usage should not continue.
Mail valances are a reminder that mail, as well as
being a form of protection, could have an ornamental
function as well. As Mann observed, perhaps a little too
negatively, mail valances in the fifteenth century had ‘no
practical value’21. From a purely utilitarian perspective,
the fact that fifteenth-century mail valances appear to
have no obvious practical function might indeed seem
puzzling.
Having no protective purpose, the valances are
nevertheless quite significant as a fashionable detail,
installed to produce a certain visual and perhaps also
auditory effect. More significantly, they are a stylistic
carry-over, an affectation that once had a practical purpose
but which was retained long after that role became
obsolete. The history of military fashion is littered with
such things – the wearing of a stylised, non-functional

19  1407 Gonzaga inventory, line 38; Mann 1938a, pp. 276-277.
20  Mann 1938, p. 329.
21  Mann 1938, p. 329.
56

Fig. 32 − After
a detail of a
fresco depicting
a joust, by Azzo
di Masetto,
c. 1289-99.
Sala di Dante,
Palazzo
Comunale, San
Gimignano.

gorgets by officers in European armies of the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries for example, or the continued
inclusion of swords in present-day dress uniforms.
In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
many of the earliest supplemental defences worn over
the basic mail armour were made of densely padded
textile and/or hardened leather. Italian men-at-arms
typically wore closely-tailored mail stockings or chausses,
over which were placed hardened leather greaves and
padded textile (‘gamboised’) cuisses which fully enclosed
the upper leg to a few inches below the knee. Over the
gamboised cuisse was placed a hardened leather or metal
poleyn, a single dished plate covering the knee-cap. The
essential visual impression of this type of leg armour is
depicted in a lively series of joust frescos in the Sala di
Dante in the Palazzo Comunale at San Gimignano in
Tuscany (Fig. 32). Here the artist took care to represent
 57

Fig. 33 − After
the funerary
slab of Filippo
de Desideri, d.
1315. From
San Domenico,
Bologna, now
Museo Civico
Medievale,
Bologna, inv.
no. 1642.

the visored and crested helms, the long-sleeved hauberks

with mufflers, the mail chausses, the hardened and tooled
leather shoulder, upper arm, and lower leg defences, the
gamboised cuisses, and the (possibly) metal poleyns with
a wonderful, energetic flair. One key aspect of this style
of armour is the way in which the eye is drawn to the
knee area, where metal, textile, leather and mail elements
all work together, overlapping in a specific way. At this
early stage we are introduced to the beginnings of the
Italian idea that the knee plate should have a hanging
fringe below it, so as to maintain the correct interaction
between the knee plate and the greave. Without some
kind of extension below the poleyn, there would be a
sizeable gap between it and greave, a gap that would yawn
open when the knee was flexed. This system represents
the beginning of what would become a long-lived
conception of how the leg armour should look and how
58

a b

Fig. 34 − a) Detail of Mars, after a relief panel by a collaborator of

Andrea Pisano, called the ‘Master of Saturn’, c. 1337-41. Museo del
Duomo, Florence.
b) After Guidoriccio da Fogliano at the siege of Montemassi Castle, by
Simone Martini, c. 1329. Sala del Mappamondo, Palazzo Pubblico,
Siena.
c) After details from the St. Benedict Frescos, by Spinello Arentino,
dated 1387. San Miniato al Monte, Florence.
 59

the various parts of the leg should be divided visually.

This type of leg defence continued to be used
throughout the fourteenth century. The area between
poleyn and greave began to be covered with mail by
the early fourteenth century, an early example being
the funerary slab of Filippo de Desideri (d. 1315) from
the church of San Domenico, Bologna. Here the mail
extends only a short way down onto the greave, and
appears to completely encircle the leg, in the manner
of a gamboised cuisse (Fig. 33), which may sometimes
have been reinforced with mail. Certainly such textile
protection for the thighs continued to be worn well
into the fourteenth century, as evidenced for example
by a roundel depicting Mars made for the Duomo in
Firenze between 1337 and 1341 (Fig. 34a). In this work
the dense lines of padding on the cuisse are especially
well-represented, as is the one-piece poleyn worn over it,
and again we can clearly see the lower edge of the cuisse
maintaining the overlap between the knee-defence and
the hardened leather or metal greave.
Perhaps one of the most famous early images of
an Italian condottiere is the equestrian portrait most
frequently attributed to Simone Martini, thought
to represent Guidoriccio da Fogliano at the siege of
Montemassi Castle (taken by the Sienese in 1328) in
the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (c. 1329). Here the area just
below the knee on this beautifully attired horseman is
entirely sheathed in mail, with what is clearly a metal
poleyn plate and gamboised cuisse above and an iron
greave, fully enclosing the lower leg, below (Fig. 34b).
Although it is not the earliest example of the immediate
precursor of the fifteenth-century valance, as implied by
60

Fig. 35 − After a detail of

a portrait of Furio Camillo,
from La prima deca by Tito
Livio, c. 1373. Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, Milan, Codex
214, fol 107v.

Fig. 36 − Two details after

an illuminated manuscript
version of Caesar’s Gallic
Wars, Italian, c. 1390.
Trivulzian Library, Milan.
Fig. 35

Mann22, it is perhaps the most obvious demonstration

of the origin of the visual effect that fifteenth-century
armourers later sought to preserve, with their diminutive
mail valances, after the introduction of the full plate
cuisse. What was essentially a full mail chausse, cut off
a short distance below the knee and worn over a closed
greave, seems to have been worn into the late fourteenth
century (Fig. 34c).
The mail mounted below the knee took on even
more of a resemblance to the valances of the fifteenth
century with the introduction of hard plate defences for
the thigh. Although iron thigh plates were available in the
second half of the fourteenth century, hardened leather
seems to have remained the most common material for
22  Mann 1938, p. 329.
 61

Fig. 36

this part of the armour until the late 1300s. The one-
piece poleyn was mounted on the thigh piece and this
complete cuisse of leather and iron was worn with a
separate enclosed greave, either of leather or metal, as
had been the case since at least 1300. This arrangement
still required some device to maintain a good interaction
between the poleyn and the greave; this necessity
continued to be met, not so often by a fully-enveloping
sheath of mail as found on the da Fogliano fresco, but
now most commonly by a rectangular piece of mail hung
from the lower edge of the poleyn itself (Figs. 35-36). It
is possible that some type of strapping or lacing system
was employed to hold the mail valance in place around
the top of the greave, although pictorial representations
do not tend to include this detail, if it ever existed.
62

Fig. 37 − Detail, funerary

slab of Brandolino III di
Zumelle, c. 1396. Castel
Brando, near Veneto.

By the end of the fourteenth century full plate

armour had become available. Armour for the joints,
made up of narrow articulating lames which slid over each
other as the elbow or knee flexed and straightened, became
more common. Some of the earliest Italian depictions
of what appears to be full plate armour continue to
include the one-piece knee with a mail valance extending
down from it (Fig. 37). Soon an articulating lame was
increasingly being added to the lower edge of the poleyn,
which sometimes led to a shortening of the valance
(Fig. 38). The multi-part poleyn with articulating lames
above and below the main knee plate caught on quickly,
although as late as the second decade of the fifteenth
century the older single-plate poleyn with longer mail
valance continues to be found (Fig. 39).
 63

Fig. 38 − Detail from the funerary monument to Carlo, Roberto and

Ricardo da Saliceto, by Pier Paolo and Jacobello dalle Masegne, c.
1403. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna, inv 1659.
64

Fig. 39 Fig. 40

Fig. 41 Fig. 39 − After a detail of the

funerary effigy of Riccardo
Gattulasco, c. 1417. Museo
Bardini, Florence.

Fig. 40 − After the effigy of

Marino di Giovanni Cossa, d.
28 October 1418. From the
church of St. Caterina, Pisa,
now Musée du Louvre, Paris,
inv. no. R.F.1185.

Fig. 41 − Left leg defence of the

‘Avant’ armour, c. 1438-40.
Glasgow Museums, inv. no.
E.1939.65.e (after Boccia).
 65

Articulated poleyns were standard after 1410,

but sometimes they may still have required functional
valances of mail. The funerary slab of Marino di
Giovanni Cossa, c. 1418 (Fig. 40), includes cuisses
with articulated poleyns with what appear to be single
lames above the main poleyn plates and a pair below;
from the lowermost lames on either leg is suspended a
mail valance. The mail pieces provide a good amount
of overlap with the greaves, and could very well still be
serving their traditional function. However, by this date
another construction method is equally possible. By this
time many cuisse-makers had replaced the mail valance
with one of plate, the so-called ‘demi-greave’ (Fig. 41), a
lame somewhat longer than the narrow articulating one
above it, moulded to fit closely over the top of the greave,
and fitted with a strap that passed around the back of the
leg to hold the upper and lower leg assemblies tightly
together. This design eliminated the problem of gapping
when the knee was bent; the whole front of the leg
was fully protected with articulated steel plates, whose
surface area could expanded and contracted with the
movement of the knee. The mail valance was apparently
no longer needed. Nevertheless the Cossa monument
could very well depict fully articulated cuisses, and yet it
also includes valances. It may in fact be one of the earliest
depictions of cosmetic valances, although we cannot be
certain. If this construction is what the artist intended,
the demi-greave which locked into place over the top of
the greave was covered by the valance, which hung on a
narrow supporting plate riveted to the top of the demi-
greave itself.
66

Figs. 42-43 − Detail

of a composite field
armour, made by Antonio
Missaglia, Giovanni
Negroli, and others,
Milan, c.1450-60. Museo
Diocesano, Mantua, inv.
no. B1.Photo of Tobias
Capwell.

Fig. 42

Fig. 43a Fig. 43b

Thus the overall visual impression was maintained,

despite the level of plate protection provided to the
knee having been increased. The continued existence
of these mail pieces beyond the period of their practical
usefulness is explained by the fact that Italians had clear,
long established ideas about what elegant leg armour
should look like and what features determined its ideal
appearance. Why should an essential piece of the picture
be discarded simply because it was obsolete from a
 67

functional point of view? It still gave an eye-catching flash

of glinting mail, it still swashed boldly and noisily against
the plate armour as the wearer moved. Furthermore,
if the whole artistic impression of the Italian man-at-
arms at the middle of the fifteenth century is taken into
consideration, the valances can been seen to provide
visual balance between the mail sleeves and skirts worn on
the upper body and the mail sabatons that protected the
feet. With the exception of a small number of instances
dating from before 1420, mail valances were rarely worn
at the same time as plate sabatons; they were designed to
contribute to the overall visual sense of a heavily mail-
laden armour, with mail issuing forth from key points
throughout the body, emphasising a burly yet refined
body-concept.
The mounting of the cosmetic valance onto
the demi-greave by means of a small applied plate is
the method found on all surviving Italian leg armour
exhibiting evidence of having been worn with them.
Only two pairs of extant cuisses retain their original
valances. The older pair now form part of the earliest
(c. 1450-1460) of the composite field armours from
the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Curtatone
(Museo Diocesano, Mantua, inv. B1; Figs. 42-43)23.
Here the narrow valance plate fits snugly over its demi-
greave, and is attached by means of a rivet on each side.
It is pierced with a row of closely-spaced holes near the

23  These pieces were present on their cuisses when the Mantua
armours were still mounted in their niches in the Sanctuary at
Curtatone; they are therefore unlikely to be anything other than
original. See Mann 1930, p. 126, pl. XXII, fig. 10.
68

Fig. 44 − Detail of a
composite field armour,
made by Pietro da Castello
of Brescia, Cristoforo
Capelli of Milan and
others, c. 1480-90. Museo
Diocesano, Mantua, inv.
no. B4. Photo of Tobias
Capwell.

lower edge. The valance has then been ‘stitched’ in place

with (presumably) soft iron wire running through each
of the valance plate holes and each of the top row of
links on the valance. The right valance is composed of
four rows of riveted round-section links of around 7mm
in diameter and two rows of butted copper alloy links.
The left is made up of three rows of riveted links and two
of copper alloy.
It is worth noting that the valance plates on all of
the Mantua armours which carry them (inv. nos. B1,
B2, B3 and B4) are shaped to fit very closely over the
demi-greave – there is no space between the two metal
surfaces. The valance and its suspension plate therefore
cover the area of the demi-greave that would otherwise
be pierced to accept the small locating pin mounted on
the greave. For this reason, it seems that all the surviving
cuisses that were definitely worn with valances (those of
the Mantua armours cited above and the pair that form
part of the ‘Devil’s Mask’ armour from the Sanctuary
of Beata Vergine delle Grazie at Udine in north-eastern
 69

Fig. 45 − Detail of a
composite field armour,
by Antonio Missaglia of
Milan, Giovanni Antonio
delle Fibbie of Brescia and
others, c. 1470-90. Museo
Diocesano, Mantua, inv.
no. B3. Photo of Tobias
Capwell.

Italy) were not fixed by means of pins to their greaves.

Instead the demi-greave was simply strapped around
the back of the leg, with the slight amount of potential
movement of the demi-greave over the greave being
tolerated or perhaps even preferred24.
Pictorial representations are almost never detailed
enough to include any information about the valance
plates themselves. However the three pairs included in
the Mantua group give us some idea of how they tended
to be decorated. Those mounted on the leg armour of inv.
no. B4 (c. 1480-1490; Fig. 44) have top edges that are
cut to follow the slightly cusped lines of the articulation

24  It is also notable that all of the primary Italian armours dating
from around 1440 and later that never carried valances on their
cuisses (the ‘Avant’ armour c. 1438-1440 at the Kelvingrove Art
Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, inv. no. E.1939.65.e; the armour of
Frederick ‘the Victorious’, Hofjagd –und Rüstkammer, Vienna, inv.
no. A2) also include the pin attachment points on their greaves for
the demi-greave, the only exception being the armour of Ulrich IX,
Vogt of Matsch, c. 1445-1450, at Churburg Castle, inv. no. 19.
70

Fig. 46 − Leg armour attributed to Nicolo da Tolentino, Italian, c.

1480-90. Said to come from the Basilica di San Niccolo, Tolentino,
current location unknown.

lames above them and decorated with simple file-marks,

such as are often found on many other parts of surviving
Italian armours. The valance plates on inv. no. B3 (Fig. 45)
are instead cusped along their upper edges, making them
a much more prominent feature of the armour overall.
Another unusual design was found on the leg
armour which incorporates the only other surviving pair
of valances, dating from c. 1480-1490 (Fig. 46). These
which once formed part of a composite armour said to
have come from the Basilica di San Niccolo in Tolentino
and which were sold at auction in Rome in 189025. Here
the valance plates are cut with broad, straight-sided saw-
teeth along their upper edges. These plates carry the
25  Richards sale 1890; Angelucci 1886.
 71

other pair of original valances, while the greaves retain

what may have been the original mail sabaton wiring,
if not the sabatons themselves26. At the time of writing,
the author has not been able to confirm the current
location of these important pieces. Encouragingly, the
Italian arms scholar Paolo Pinti has related, in his 1997
work on arms and armour preserved in local museums,
churches and castles throughout Italy, how he found this
leg armour, along with the rest its composite armour, in
a box in store at the Basilica at Tolentino in 197627.
Although they derived from a functional piece
of armour, the mail valances themselves after around
1420 were a stylistic remnant and thus exclusively
ornamental. All of the standard decorative techniques
used on mail armour were routinely applied to them,
as was deemed appropriate to individual armours. We
may assume that entirely plain valances (made up only
of iron links, mounted on plain supporting plates) must
have existed, but the author has not encountered any
direct evidence of them in any full-colour representation
(where the absence of yellow metal decoration would be
apparent). Of course many depictions of valances are
found on sculptures, drawings and funerary monuments
where colour was often not included or does not survive;
it is therefore difficult to judge how common the plain
versions were. One supposes that they could have been
common, but artists tended to portray their legions of
armoured saints, heroes and other important characters

26  See Mann 1930, p. 126, pl. 28, fig. 3; Mann 1938, pp. 316,
329.
27  See Pinti 1997.
72

Fig. 47 − Detail from

a fragment depicting
halbardiers, by
Vittore Carpaccio,
c. 1490-3. Uffizi
Gallery, Florence,
inv. no. 901.

Fig. 48 − Detail
from The Virgin
and Child with
Saints, by Lorenzo
Costa, c. 1492.
Church of St
Petronio (Basilica),
Bologna. Photo of
Tobias Capwell.
 73

in rich equipment that was not representative of the real-

world majority.
The most typical form of decoration was two or
three rows of yellow metal links (latten, gilt-metal28, or
in rare cases perhaps even solid gold29), which formed a
contrasting border along the bottom edge of the valance
(Figs. 47-48). This type of decoration is also found on
the extant examples on Mantua inv. no. B1; in that case,
as mentioned above, the yellow metal links are butted,
and they do not appear to be modern additions. It is
impossible to be certain about their date, but they do
appear to have been present on the valances when they
were still installed in the Sanctuary at Curtatone. They
must therefore be very old.
Although they are rare, valances made entirely of
yellow metal links do appear in pictorial representations
(Fig. 49a). Not surprisingly, they tend to be found
on richer armours or at least on the most prominent
character in a scene. Occasionally they echo and enhance
the use of gilded or otherwise yellow metal on the plate
armour itself; fully-gilt poleyns are given an even bolder
presence by the addition of valances treated in the same
way, while the more usual yellow metal valance borders
are incorporated into a more specific decorative theme
when used in conjunction with selective gilding applied
to the edges of the poleyn plates (Fig. 49b).
28  The yellow metal cuff borders on a pair of fifteenth- or sixteenth-
century mail sleeves, now in the Musée de Valere, Sion, appear to be
made up of three rows of gilt-latten links.
29  The will of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, mentions a mail
standard the links of which were solid gold. Cited in Pfaffenbichler
1992, p. 38.
74

Fig. 49a

Fig. 49 −
a) After a detail of Scipio Africanus, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, c.
1482-5. Room of the Lilies, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
 75

Fig. 49b

Fig. 49 −
b) After a detail of Virgin and Child, with Saints Apollonia and
Sebastian, by Davide Ghirlandaio, c. 1490. Philadelphia Museum
of Art, inv. no. 65.
76

Fig. 50 − Detail
from The Martyrdom
of St Sebastian, c.
1490. St. Sebastian
Chapel, Church of St.
Petronio (Basilica)
Bologna. Photo of
Tobias Capwell.

Fig. 51 − Detail from

The Virgin and Child
with Four Angels
and Six Saints (‘San
Barnaba’ altarpiece),
by Sandro Botticelli,
c. 1487-8. Uffizi
Gallery, Florence, inv.
no. 8390.
 77

Less frequently the lower edges of the valances

are dagged or ‘vandyked’ (Figs. 50-51). The dags are
sometimes quite long and well-defined, being composed
of between four and six tapering rows of links, or less
pronounced, made of only two or three rows. When
employed on the valances, dagging tends also to be
continued on the mail skirts and even the mail sleeves
(worn over the vambraces but under the pauldrons in
the standard Italian manner), though this last feature
was rare in Italy30.
In one instance (Fig. 52), found in an altarpiece
of the Virgin and Child with Saints (in which one of the
saints wears partial armour including full leg defences) by
Francesco Francia at the church of S. Giacomo Maggiore
in Bologna (c. 1494), the valances are tapered slightly
towards the bottom edge, the number of links in each
descending row being decreased at the edges.
Another style of valance seems to have remained in
use throughout the fifteenth century, and was probably
still worn into the early 1500s, being contemporary with
the more usual oblong fringe type. Here the valance was
not simply a little curtain of mail, but rather a tube
which encircled the knee and hung down over the top

30  A fine example of a depiction of an Italian armour worn with

dagged mail sleeves, skirts and valances (Fig. 50) is the St. Michael
found on the ‘San Barnaba Altarpiece’ (c. 1487-1488) by Sandro
Botticelli, from the Church of St. Barnaba in Florence (now Galleria
Uffizi, inv. no. 8390). Interestingly, dagging on mail pieces worn
with full harness was, in contrast, absolutely typical in the Low
Countries and is to be found constantly in Flemish depictions of
armoured warriors, worn with the Italianate armours of that region on
the cuisse valances, skirts, sleeves, standards and armet aventails.
78

Fig. 52 − Detail from Virgin and Child with Saints, by Francesco

Francia, c. 1494. S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna. Photo of Tobias
Capwell.
 79

Fig. 53 − After
a detail from
The Virgin
and Child
with Saints,
by Lorenzo
Costa and
Gianfrancesco
Maineri,
c. 1499.
National
Gallery,
London, inv.
no. NG1119.

of the greave, in the manner observed throughout the

fourteenth century. In depictions of this arrangement the
mail just below the knee can usually be seen extending
up underneath the lower lames of the poleyn, rather
than sitting directly below them. When views of the side
of the leg are presented, the mail can quite clearly be
seen to continue around the back of the calf. In such
cases the demi-greave is also (usually) omitted, the cuisse
terminating at the articulation lames below the main
knee plate.
Such enclosed valances seem to have been worn in
one of two ways. The examples found in The Virgin and
Child with Saints (probably 1499) by Lorenzo Costa and
Gianfrancesco Maineri now in the National Gallery in
London (Fig. 53), quite clearly shows that the mail pieces
are still wired onto the cuisses. The point of attachment
80

Fig. 54 – Other
example of form of
enclosed valance are
depicted in a semi-
relief Saint George,
Lombard, c. 1460-
1470. Pinacoteca
Tosio Martinegro,
Brescia, inv. no. 114
(Archivio fotografico
Musei di Brescia-
Fotostudio Rapuzzi).
 81

however is the lowermost of the articulation lames,

since no demi-greaves are present to be overlapped. The
mail then is continued around the back of the leg, and
presumably was brought into tension, providing a close
fit, when the wearer’s leg was inserted31.
It is not always possible to determine with certainty
which style of valance is being represented in a pictorial
source, especially in compositions that provide a direct
frontal view of the subject. Nevertheless two clues can be
kept in mind:

• the tubular type tend to be significantly longer

than the cosmetic, front only form.
• the demi-greave is usually (but not always)
omitted when tubular valances are worn.

Of whatever type, mail valances, and indeed
mail sabatons too, are fascinating reminders that on a
Renaissance armour, as in an ancient myth or traditional
story, the meaning is frequently to be found in the small
details. They are easily ignored, but if we dismiss them as
superfluous or unimportant we may also be discarding
one of the keys to understanding not only the history
and function of such armours but also the intentions of
the makers and the mentality of the wearers.

31  Other examples of this form of enclosed valance are depicted

in a semi-relief Saint George, Lombard, c. 1460-1470 (Pinacoteca
Tosio Martinegro, Brescia, inv. no. 114); an ink sketch of soldiers
by Pinturicchio, c. 1470-1480 in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; Pietro
Perugino’s Archangel Michael, part of the Certosa Altarpiece, c.
1496-1500, National Gallery, London, inv. no. 288.2.
82

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Angelucci 1886
A. Angelucci, Le armi del cavaliere Raoul Richards alla
mostra dei metalli artistici di Roma, Roma 1886

Blair 1958
C. Blair, European Armour circa 1066 to circa 1700,
London 1958

Boccia 1982
L.G. Boccia, Guerre e assoldati in Toscana 1260-1364,
Florence 1982

Boccia 1982a
L.G. Boccia, Le armatura di S. Maria delle Grazie di
Curtatone di Mantova e l’armatura Lombarda del ‘400,
Milano 1982

Boccia, Coelho 1974

L.G. Boccia, E.T. Coelho, L’armamento di cuoio e ferro
nel Trecento italiano, in «L’illustrazione Italiana», II,
1974, pp. 24-37

Capwell 2006
T. Capwell, The Real Fighting Stuff: Arms and Armour at
Glasgow Museums, Glasgow 2006
 83

Graf Trapp 1929

O. Graf Trapp, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg,
trans. by J. G. Mann, London 1929

Joubert 2006
F. Joubert, Catalogue of the Collection of European Arms
and Armour Formed at Greenock by R. L. Scott, Glasgow
1924, ris. anast. Godmanchester 2006

Mann 1930
J.G. Mann, The Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie
with Notes on the Evolution of Italian Armour During the
Fifteenth Century, in «Archaeologia», LXXX, 1930, pp.
117-142

Mann 1938
J.G. Mann, A Further Account of the Armour preserved
in the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie near
Mantua, in «Archaeologia», LXXXVIII, 1938, pp. 311-
351

Mann 1938a
J.G. Mann, The Lost Armoury of the Gonzagas, in «The
Archaeological Journal», XCV, 1938, pp. 239-283

Mann 1956
J.G. Mann, Three Armours in the Scott Collection, in
«Scottish Art Review», special number II/6, 1956,
pp. 2-9
84

Pfaffenbichler 1992
M. Pfaffenbichler, Armourers, London 1992

Pinti 2005
Pinti, Paolo, Armi e arte: un viaggio per musei, chiese e
castelli alla ricerca di armi antiche, alla scoperta di cose
belle (Monteprandone: Regione Marche, 1997).

Richards sale 1890

Raoul Richards collection, sale catalogue, Giacomini et
Capobianchi, Rome, March 3-29, 1890

Scalini 1996
M. Scalini, L’Armeria Trapp di Castel Coira, Udine
1996

Woosnam-Savage 1990
R.C. Woosnam-Savage, The “Avant” Armour and R.L.
Scott, in «Park Lane Arms Fair», VII, 1990, pp. 5-11