Cleveland Museum of Art

Breastplate

Date: c. 1540
Medium: steel
Culture: Germany
Department: Medieval Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 96064

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

The breastplate protects the chest and abdomen and is normally worn with a backplate. This one features a lance rest which start to appear as early as the late 1300s. The purpose of the lance rest is not to bear the weight of the lance. Instead allows a mounted warrior to hold the lance firmly couched under his right arm and stops it from sliding backward. If the target is hit the lance rest also acts as a shock absorber, preventing the lance from shooting backward and dispersing the impact via the breastplate all over the upper body rather than leaving it concentrated on the hand. When not needed it can be folded up so that is is out of the way. The decoration along the edge is known as a roped edge.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance
Provenance: -1916: Frank Gair Macomber (1849-1941), Boston, MA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1916-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

European Renaissance Armor Components
These objects are all pieces of defensive armor and military equipment from 15th-17th century Europe, primarily from major armoring centers like Italy, Germany, and France.
500 objects from 4 institutions