"Herkules-Harnisch"

This armour was first listed in the 1678 inventory of the imperial armoury, then housed at Stallburg Palace in Vienna. Displayed in vitrine no. 22, it was described as ‘a chased black cuirass, made in Paris, gilt, with images’ (ein getribener schwarzer khyriß, welcher zu Paris gemacht worden, vergolt, mit bildern) and shown with ‘a tiger skin lined with yellow taffeta’ (ein tügerhaut mit gelben daffet gefuedert). In 1750, it was moved to the imperial arsenal on Renngasse in central Vienna, where it was erroneously displayed as armour made for Emperor Rudolf II. When the arsenal was closed in the midnineteenth century, the armour was moved to the K. K. Artillerie-ArsenalMuseum (today the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum), where it was regarded as the museum’s most valuable object. Only in the 1940s was Bruno Thomas, curator and later director of the Imperial Armoury, able to prove that the armour dates from the mid-sixteenth century and attribute it to Archduke (later Emperor) Maximilian II.

Until the 1930s, the armour was regarded as the work of a German armourer, possibly from Munich. Thomas attributed it instead to Eliseus Libaerts, who was mainly active in Antwerp. However, the handling of the repoussé work and some of the figures suggest it was produced in Paris. The 1678 inventory mentioned above supports this attribution, because it describes the harness as ‘made in Paris’ (zu Paris gemacht). This lavishly embellished armour was presumably a gift from Henry II, King of France, for the young Archduke Maximilian.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, Classicizing parade armour either imitated sculpted Roman muscle cuirasses or opted for all-over chased depictions of Classical scenes. Maximilian’s armour depicts the Labours of Hercules; see, for example, Hercules and Antaeus on the front pauldrons, or, on the breastplate, Hercules leaning on his club.