Halbharnisch

In 1619, during the Bohemian War (the early phase of the Thirty Years War) and the defence of Vienna, Archduke Leopold V requested that a thenfashionable armour in the Netherlandish manner, produced by his court armourer Hans Jakob Topf at Innsbruck, be sent to him in Vienna. This is probably the armour given the inventory number A 1534, though it has no marks that would allow us to identify it unequivocally. Citing formal similarities and comparable proportions, Bruno Thomas, curator and later director of the Imperial Armoury, also attributed this half-armour to Topf in 1974.

The half-armour weighs an almost unbelievable 42.55 kilograms (around 100 pounds), with helmet, reinforcing pieces, and reinforcing visor alone weighing 10.75 kilograms (around 23 pounds). The massive armour was presumably designed to protect Leopold on his visits to the entrenchments during sieges. Its reinforced fauld makes it unsuitable for riding. However, the dents on breastplate and backplate do not indicate that the archduke wore it on the battlefield. Instead, they document that the armourer fired a gun at the armour, a sign of quality to prove it offered protection even from bullets. The armour thus symbolizes the moment in the evolution of warfare when firearms began to overcome the protective effect of armour, ultimately making the latter obsolete. With steel plates this thick and the resulting weight, armour had reached the limit of what was, quite literally, bearable.

Hans Jakob Topf was the scion of a family of armourers who had supplied the court at Innsbruck since the late sixteenth century. He was first recorded in 1605 as a producer of munition armour for the arsenal. In 1618 he served as court and arsenal armourer and was in charge of the armoury at Ambras Castle.

Together with this half-armour, a chanfron has survived (inv. A 1530a) that was stamped with a Netherlands armourer’s mark (a crowned shield with three eagles) and the initials MP. An escutcheon with slanted bars (bendy sinister) was once stitched to the now-lost leather lining, together with the inscription ‘Belonging to the armour of the Marchese di Pescara’ (Zu Marchio di Pescara rusting gehörig). This is why the armour was long erroneously attributed to Fernando d’Ávalos, Margrave of Pescara.