Reiterharnisch (Küriss) der blau-goldenen Garnitur

This armour, one of the most elegant ever produced, is the result of the successful collaboration between an armourer and a goldsmith, both anonymous. The surface was blued and then embellished with threedimensional decorative gilt gunmetal bands. The latter feature a wealth of motifs, including mythological figures, animals, masks, fruit, floral garlands, and putti. Note around the neck on the breastplate the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The then nineteen-year-old Maximilian had been invested with this elite order of chivalry in 1546.

The armour was originally part of a small garniture, of which a partially preserved half-armour also survives. A Spanish kettle hat (capacete) and a round shield belonging to the half-armour are also now in Vienna; the rest was presumably lost during the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century. Breastplate and backplate with bevor are now in Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Rüstkammer), and a left gauntlet is in New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Pauldrons, rerebraces and vambraces, tassets, and the saddle have not survived. Stylistically, the Blue-and-Gold Armour is closely related to the field armour from the Fluted Garniture (inv. A 534), which was produced more or less at the same time, also for Maximilian II.

In the early eighteenth century, this armour from the Blue-and-Gold Garniture was repeatedly repurposed in portraits of Emperor Charles VI. We may assume that the emperor was trying to reference the reign of his eponymous ancestor, Emperor Charles V, to emphasize his claim to the Spanish crown, which he had been forced to relinquish following the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–14).