Burgundian armour collection

Here are the highlights of the Burgundian armour collection I have on line at the moment. Let me clarify- I'm counting anything that was ever under reign of the Valois dukes of Burgundy to be "Burgundian." Like this fine fellow is from 1370-1390 Drakenborch Utrecht Holland:

The simple cops and what look like splits are similar to earlier German harnesses. Holland and Brabant (see below) didn't become part of the Burgundian holdings until Philip the Good got them several decades later, so these are sort of cheating.

This guy is Jan Van Wassenaar, died in 1378 in North Brabant:

His harness is suprisingly dominated by maile for the time, and the cops are reminiscent of earlier styles.
The van Heers brothers of Bruxelles, circa 1398:


These are tombs of two of the Valois dukes. The solid bottomed great bascinet belongs to Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless- side note: he had a long time and intensely bitter rivalry with his cousin Duke Louis d'Orleans. Jean had his goons hack Louis arms off. Hacked the heck off. Cold stuff. Jean got away with it, but in an act of poetic justice years later was later assassinated on a bridge in Paris by the Dauphin's men) and the other one belonged to his father, Philip the Bold:



This guy is from Brabant, and dated from 1398 to 1410:


A seal of Jean Sans Peur from 1405. I have a number of seals but there's not a lot of detail in any of them:


Philip the Fair from about 1500. I guess fair's a relative term. There are some great details in his gauntlets and sabatons, and like all the Burgundian dukes, there's the pimp style hat...


This one's also Phil the Fair, but resides in Innsubruck, so it's debatable if the armour style should be included in a Burgundian collection. Due to their wealth and travels the dukes may sport a more international style anyway:


Adding in an illumination because I need more variety. My notes say this is Jean de Vignay, but all I can find out about the guy is that he as a translator who worked for the Philip VI, who was a Valois king of France and Jean died about 1340. The arms in the picture are of Philip the Bold of Burgundy. Philip acquired the counties of Flanders and Burgundy (the duchy of Burgundy was nominaly under the French king, and the county of Burgundy just to its east was part of the Holy Roman Empire, confusing, no?) in 1384 from his wife. Those emblems are present in the scroll, so this had to be from between 1384 and 1404:


This is the St. George in a much larger altar piece commissioned by Philip the Bold in the 1390s. It's in the ducal palace in Dijon in the same room as the tomb of Philip the Bold.

Comments

Bertus Brokamp said…
Utrecht was not part of the county of Holland but a bishopric of its own, called the Sticht. Although it was ruled for a long time by a bastard son, David of Burgundy, of Philip the Bold it was not officially part of the Burgundian lands.
The Drakenborch effigy is dated by the museum on its armourstyle, not because a firm dating is known when it was erected or the person depicted died. So the 1370-1390 dating can be taken with a grain of salt and could easily be more to the 1350-1370 era in my opinion.
Fascinating! The cops and splints do point to an earlier date that's more in line with your hunch.
This effigy and the du Guesclin one both have a suspiciously unmolested look which makes me wonder if they were extensively restored or made at a substantially later date.
Bertus Brokamp said…
Dunno about the Guesclin one but the Drakenborch effigy was partly restored in the late 19th c. IIRC the head is new, as are the feet and part of the lower legs. Maybe the hands and part of scabbard as well.
Do you know what they based the restoration work on? The two effigies have a lot in common, particularly the maile standards around their necks and the sabatons. I know a lot of art from this era was lost during the French revolution- the tombs of the Burgundian dukes are an example, so we should take the images above with a grain of salt too. National heroes like du Guesclin weren't immune.

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