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69-429: An arming doublet worn under armour, particularly plate armour of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, contains arming points for attaching plates. Fifteenth-century examples may include mail goussets sewn into the elbows and armpits, to protect the wearer in locations not covered by plate. German gothic armour arming doublets were generally shorter than Italian white armour doublets, which could extend to

138-426: A breastplate , a burgonet , morion or cabasset and gauntlets , however, also became popular among 16th-century mercenaries , and there are many references to so-called munition armour being ordered for infantrymen at a fraction of the cost of full plate armour. This mass-produced armour was often heavier and made of lower quality metal than fine armour for commanders. Specialised jousting armour produced in

207-691: A helmet , a gorget (or bevor ), spaulders , pauldrons with gardbraces to cover the armpits as was seen in French armour, or besagews (also known as rondels ) which were mostly used in Gothic Armour, rerebraces , couters , vambraces , gauntlets , a cuirass (breastplate and backplate) with a fauld , tassets and a culet , a mail skirt, cuisses , poleyns , greaves , and sabatons . The very fullest sets, known as garnitures, more often made for jousting than war, included pieces of exchange , alternate pieces suiting different purposes, so that

276-401: A sport ( hastilude ) with less direct relevance to warfare, for example using separate specialized armour and equipment. During the 1490s, emperor Maximilian I invested a great deal of effort in perfecting the sport, for which he received his nickname of "The Last Knight". Rennen and Stechen were two sportive forms of the joust developed during the 15th century and practiced throughout

345-408: A book from Johns Hopkins University Press in 2013. The project received considerable media attention after Aldrete tested his construction by shooting an arrow at Bartell with cameras rolling. But Peter Connolly's reconstruction was based on a misremembered, twice-translated summary of a Byzantine chronicle which did not mention glue, not on an ancient text, artifact, or depiction. No culture before

414-399: A mail shirt (haubergeon or hauberk) beneath their plate armour (or coat-of-plates ). Later, full mail shirts were replaced with mail patches, called gussets , which were sewn onto a gambeson or arming jacket. Further protection for plate armour was the use of small round plates called besagews , that covered the armpit area and the addition of couters and poleyns with "wings" to protect

483-516: A mistranslation of a summary of a description of medieval armour in 1869. By the late 6th century BC, many paintings and sculptures show hoplites and other warriors in the Aegean wearing the linothorax instead of a bronze cuirass. This could have been due to the lower price, lesser weight, or cooler material. Artists continue to show it in the Hellenistic period after the death of Alexander

552-590: A portrait of Frederick the Great in 1739 still shows him in armour, while a later painting showing him as a commander in the Seven Years' War (c. 1760) depicts him without armour. Body armour made a brief reappearance in the American Civil War with mixed success. During World War I , both sides experimented with shrapnel armour, and some soldiers used their own dedicated ballistic armour such as

621-877: A powerful symbol of the Australian outback. In 1916, General Adrian of the French army provided an abdominal shield which was light in weight (approx. one kilogram) and easy to wear. A number of British officers recognised that many casualties could be avoided if effective armour were available. The first usage of the term " flak jacket " refers to the armour originally developed by the Wilkinson Sword company during World War II to help protect Royal Air Force (RAF) air personnel from flying debris and shrapnel . The Red Army also made use of ballistic steel body armour, typically chestplates, for combat engineers and assault infantry. After World War II, steel plates were soon replaced by vests made from synthetic fibre, in

690-578: A range of techniques, and further greatly increasing the cost. Elaborately decorated plate armour for royalty and the very wealthy was being produced. Highly decorated armour is often called parade armour , a somewhat misleading term as such armour might well be worn on active military service. Steel plate armour for Henry II of France , made in 1555, is covered with meticulous embossing, which has been subjected to blueing, silvering and gilding. Such work required armourers to either collaborate with artists or have artistic skill of their own; another alternative

759-528: A revolution from their first proven use (in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries) as an independent item of armour to one that facilitated the wearing of mail, but they remained popular amongst infantry as cloth armour. Although quilted armour survived into the English Civil War in England as a poor man's cuirass , and as an item to be worn beneath the few remaining suits of full plate, it

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828-618: A smooth piece wrapped around the chest, two flaps over the shoulders, and a skirt of flaps covering the hips and belly. By the 4th century BC, armour with a similar shape appears in wall paintings in Italy, sealstones in Persia, gold combs in Crimea, and stone carvings in Gaul. Because only a few examples of armour shaped like this survive, researchers such as Peter Connolly identify the lost armour with

897-418: A striking resemblance to modern-day body armour , which used at first silk, then ballistic nylon and later, Kevlar as its fabric. For common soldiers who could not afford mail or plate armour, the gambeson, combined with a helmet as the only additional protection, remained a common sight on European battlefields during the entire Middle Ages, and its decline – paralleling that of plate armour – came only with

966-406: A violent shootout with police at the town of Glenrowan in 1880. The armour was reasonably effective against bullets and made Kelly seem almost invincible to the policemen, who likened him to an evil spirit or Bunyip with one constable reporting that "[I] fired at him point blank and hit him straight in the body. But there is no use firing at Ned Kelly; he can't be hurt", however it left sections of

1035-436: Is a line by the poet Alcaeus , who lived around 650–550 BC. From the fifth century BC to the first century AD, Greek and Roman writers mention soldiers from many nations wearing linen armour, but they rarely describe it in detail. These writers include Herodotus (2.182, 3.47, 7.63), Livy (4.19.2–20.7), Strabo (Geography, 3.3.6, 13.1.10), Suetonius ( Galba 19.1), and Pausanias . The philosopher Plutarch says that Alexander

1104-481: Is called tōsei gusoku (gusoku), which means modern armour. The type of gusoku , which covered the front and back of the body with a single iron plate with a raised center and a V-shaped bottom like plate armour, was specifically called nanban dou gusoku ("Western style gusoku " ) and was used by some samurai. Japanese armour makers designed bulletproof plate armour called tameshi gusoku ("bullet tested"), which allowed soldiers to continue wearing armour despite

1173-406: Is only known through texts, paintings, and sculptures, rather than archaeological finds, modern scholars can only guess at its makeup and design. Artistic depictions show armor that has a top piece which covers the shoulders and is tied down on the chest, a main body piece wrapping around the wearer and covering the chest from the waist up, and a row of pteruges or flaps around the bottom which cover

1242-588: Is related to the Latin pantex , meaning 'abdomen', cognate with English paunch . Open, quilted leather jackets and trousers were worn by Scythian horsemen before the 4th century BC, as can be seen on Scythian gold ornaments crafted by Greek goldsmiths. As stand-alone cloth armour, the European gambeson can be traced at least to the late tenth century, but it is likely to have been in use in various forms for longer than that. In Europe, its use became widespread in

1311-401: Is still a point of contention with regard to plate armour. The evolution of the 14th-century plate armour also triggered the development of various polearms . They were designed to deliver a strong impact and concentrate energy on a small area and cause damage through the plate. Maces , war hammers , and pollaxes (poleaxes) were used to inflict blunt force trauma through armour. Strong blows to

1380-655: The Ancient Greek : λινοθώραξ , Ancient Greek: [linotʰɔ̌ːraːks] ) is a type of upper body armor that was used throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The term linothorax is a modern term based on the Greek λινοθώραξ , which means "wearing a breastplate of linen "; a number of ancient Greek and Latin texts from the 6th century BC to the third century AD mention θώρακες λίνεοι ( thorakes lineoi ) (Greek) or loricae linteae (Latin) which means 'linen body armour'. These are usually equated with some of

1449-647: The Burgundian Wars , Wars of the Roses , Polish–Teutonic Wars , Eighty Years' War , French Wars of Religion , Italian Wars , Hungarian–Ottoman Wars , Ottoman–Habsburg wars , Polish–Ottoman Wars , a significant part of the Hundred Years' War , and even the Thirty Years' War . The most heavily armoured troops of the period were heavy cavalry , such as the gendarmes and early cuirassiers , but

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1518-645: The Kofun period (250–538), iron plate cuirasses ( tankō ) and helmets were being made. Plate armour was used in Japan during the Nara period (646–793); both plate and lamellar armours have been found in burial mounds, and haniwa (ancient clay figures) have been found depicting warriors wearing full armour. In Japan, the warfare of the Sengoku period (1467–1615) required large quantities of armour to be produced for

1587-620: The Late Middle Ages . Meanwhile, makeshift steel armour for protection against shrapnel and early forms of ballistic vests began development from the mid-19th century to the present day. Plate armour was also famously used in Australia by the Kelly Gang, a group of four bushrangers led by Edward "Ned" Kelly , who had constructed four suits of improvised armour from plough mouldboards and whose crime spree culminated with

1656-582: The Renaissance , as the use of firearms became more widespread. By the eighteenth century, it was no longer in military use. While the use of linen in these jackets has been proven by archaeological evidence, the use of cotton – and cotton-based canvas – is disputed, since large amounts of cotton cloth were not widely available in Northern Europe at this time. It is quite probable that Egypt (and Asia Minor generally) still produced cotton well after

1725-482: The medieval French alcottonem , might be a loan from Arabic al-qutn , meaning ' cotton ' (definite article – " the cotton"). In medieval Norse , the garment was known as vápntreyja , literally 'weapon shirt', or panzari/panzer . Treyja is a loan from (Middle) Low German. Panzari/panzer is probably also a loan from Middle Low German , though the word has its likely origin in Italian, and

1794-490: The 10th to the 13th century, mail armour was so popular in Europe, that it was known as the age of mail. Partial plate armour, made out of bronze, which protected the chest and the lower limbs, was used by the ancient Greeks , as early as the late Bronze Age . The Dendra panoply protected the entire torso on both sides and included shoulder and neck protections. Less restrictive and heavy armour would become more widespread in

1863-461: The 15th and 16th centuries. The full suit of armour, also referred to as a panoply , is thus a feature of the very end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. Its popular association with the " medieval knight ” is due to the specialised jousting armour which developed in the 16th century. Full suits of Gothic plate armour and Milanese plate armour were worn on the battlefields of

1932-445: The 15th century. Mail was made from hundreds of small interlinking iron or steel rings held together by rivets . It was made this way so that it would be able to follow the contour of the wearer's body, maximizing comfort. Mail armour was designed mainly to defend against thrusting and cutting weapons, rather than bludgeons . Typical clothing articles made of mail at the time would be hooded cloaks, gloves, trousers , and shoes. From

2001-425: The 16th century. The armours used for these two respective styles of the joust were known as Rennzeug and Stechzeug , respectively. The Stechzeug in particular developed into extremely heavy armour which completely inhibited the movement of the rider, in its latest forms resembling an armour-shaped cabin integrated into the horse armour more than a functional suit of armour. Such forms of sportive equipment during

2070-694: The 1950s, made of either boron carbide , silicon carbide , or aluminium oxide . They were issued to the crew of low-flying aircraft, such as the UH-1 and UC-123 , during the Vietnam War . The synthetic fibre Kevlar was introduced in 1971, and most ballistic vests since the 1970s are based on kevlar, optionally with the addition of trauma plates to reduce the risk of blunt trauma injury. Such plates may be made of ceramic, metal (steel or titanium) or synthetic materials. Linothorax The linothorax ( / ˈ l iː n oʊ θ ɔː r æ k s / , from

2139-592: The 1970s, Peter Connolly built a linothorax by gluing layers of linen cloth together and cutting them to shape. His reconstruction inspired many others, including one by Professor Emeritus Gregory S. Aldrete and his student Scott Bartell at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay . This project was present at the joint American Philological Association / Archaeological Institute of America Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 2009, and published in

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2208-439: The 1st century BC and 4th century AD. Single plates of metal armour were again used from the late 13th century on, to protect joints and shins, and these were worn over a mail hauberk . Gradually the number of plate components of medieval armour increased, protecting further areas of the body, and in barding those of a cavalryman's horse. Armourers developed skills in articulating the lames or individual plates for parts of

2277-693: The 4th century BC to the 1st century AD. Two are of iron plate, one is of iron scales on a leather foundation, and two are of mail interwoven with scales. Some of the linen armour in ancient texts was probably shaped the same way, but how this ancient linen armour was made is unknown. Modern researchers have had difficulty studying ancient linen armour because linen is biodegradable and leaves few remains for archeologists to discover. In recent times, many cultures from India to Scotland to South America made linen armour by quilting many layers of fabric together or stuffing them with loose fibres such as cotton. The type stuffed with loose fibres often looks bumpy and unlike

2346-408: The 7th and 8th centuries, and knowledge (and samples) of this cloth was brought to Europe by the returning Crusaders; however, the logistics and expense of equipping a town militia or army with large numbers of cotton-based garments make its usage doubtful when flax-based textiles (linen) were in widespread use. Linothorax was a type of armour similar to gambeson, used by ancient Greeks . Meanwhile,

2415-633: The American Brewster Body Shield , although none were widely produced. The heavy cavalry armour ( cuirass ) used by the German , British , and French empires during the Napoleonic Wars , were actively used until the first few months of World War I , when French cuirassiers went to meet the enemy dressed in armour outside of Paris . The cuirass represents the final stage of the tradition of plate armour descended from

2484-476: The Great wore a "double linen breastplate" at the battle of Gaugamela (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 32.8–12). References to linen armour become much rarer in the Roman imperial period. It seems likely that as the Roman army developed cheap forms of iron armour such as the lorica hamata, there was less demand for linen armour. Beginning around 575 BC, artists in the Aegean often show a distinctive style of armour with

2553-470: The Great. The Roman emperor Caracalla equipped a "Macedonian phalanx" with linen armour around 200 AD (Cassius Dio 78.7). Some scholars believe that Homer refers to a linothorax when he describes Ajax the Lesser as "linen-breasted" ( Iliad 2.529 and 2.830). Other scholars believe that this refers to a linen tunic or smooth glossy skin. The first clear reference to linen armour in any ancient language

2622-567: The Mesoamericans were known to have used a kind of quilted textile armour called Ichcahuipilli before the arrival of the Spaniards. Another example is the bullet-resistant Myeonje baegab that was created during Korea's Joseon Dynasty in an attempt to confront the effects of Western rifles. Plate armour Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze , iron , or steel plates, culminating in

2691-544: The ancient art, but the type of many layers of cloth can be smooth. Textile archaeologist Hero Granger-Taylor proposes that ancient linen armour was woven using a special technique called twining. Twined textiles were used in military contexts in Bronze Age Egypt, Roman Syria, and Maori New Zealand, so it is plausible that they were also used in Classical Greece and Italy before the Roman conquest. In

2760-449: The armour shown in sculptures and paintings from Italy and Greece from 575 BC onwards. Very little is known about how ancient linen armour was made. Linen armour in other cultures was usually quilted and stuffed with loose fibre or stitched together many layers thick, but it could also have been made with a special weave called twining which creates a thick, tough fabric. The theory that it was made of layers of linen glued together comes from

2829-518: The belly and hips. Vase paintings from Athens often show scales covering part of the armour. A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay led by Professor Emeritus Gregory S. Aldrete have catalogued art from Italy and the Aegean which shows this armour. Five extant pieces of armour shaped like the armour in Athenian vase paintings survive from sites in south-eastern Europe from

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2898-455: The body that needed to be flexible, and in fitting armour to the individual wearer like a tailor. The cost of a full suit of high quality fitted armour, as opposed to the cheaper munition armour (equivalent of ready-to-wear ) was enormous, and inevitably restricted to the wealthy who were seriously committed to either soldiering or jousting . The rest of an army wore inconsistent mixtures of pieces, with mail still playing an important part. In

2967-558: The cuirassiers throughout the European wars of religion . After the mid-17th century, plate armour was mostly reduced to the simple breastplate or cuirass worn by cuirassiers , with the exception of the Polish Hussars that still used considerable amounts of plate. This was due to the development of the musket , which could penetrate armour at a considerable distance. For infantry, the breastplate gained renewed importance with

3036-404: The development of shrapnel in the late Napoleonic Wars . The use of steel plates sewn into flak jackets dates to World War II , and was replaced by more modern materials such as fibre-reinforced plastic , since the mid-20th century. Mail armour is a layer of protective clothing worn most commonly from the 9th to the 13th century, though it would continue to be worn under plate armour until

3105-631: The ever-growing armies of foot soldiers ( ashigaru ). Simple munition-quality chest armours ( dō ) and helmets ( kabuto ) were mass-produced. In 1543, the Portuguese brought matchlock firearms ( tanegashima ) to Japan. As Japanese swordsmiths began mass-producing matchlock firearms and firearms became used in war, the use of Lamellar armour ( ō-yoroi and dō-maru ), previously used as samurai armour, gradually decreased. Japanese armour makers started to make new types of armour made of larger iron plate and plated leather. This new suit of armour

3174-465: The fashion with 18th-century nobles and generals long after they had ceased to be militarily useful on the battlefield due to the advent of inexpensive muskets . The development of powerful firearms made all but the finest and heaviest armour obsolete. The increasing power and availability of firearms and the nature of large, state-supported infantry led to more portions of plate armour being cast off in favour of cheaper, more mobile troops. Leg protection

3243-530: The final phase of the joust in 16th-century Germany gave rise to modern misconceptions about the heaviness or clumsiness of "medieval armour", as notably popularised by Mark Twain 's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . The extremely heavy helmets of the Stechzeug are explained by the fact that the aim was to detach the crest of the opponent's helmet, resulting in frequent full impact of

3312-452: The form of the muscle cuirass during classic antiquity before being superseded by other types of armour. Parthian and Sassanian heavy cavalry known as Clibanarii used cuirasses made out of scales or mail and small, overlapping plates in the manner of the manica for the protection of arms and legs. Plate armour in the form of the Lorica segmentata was used by the Roman empire between

3381-471: The groin and limbs exposed; during the infamous "Glenrowan Affair", gang member Joe Byrne was killed by a bullet to the groin, Kelly was captured after a fifteen-minute last stand against police (having sustained a total of 28 bullet wounds over his body), and the remaining two members are thought to have committed suicide shortly after. Although the recovered suits were almost immediately mismatched, they have since been reorganized and restored and today remain as

3450-506: The head could result in concussion , even if the armour is not penetrated. Fluted plate was not only decorative, but also reinforced the plate against bending under striking or blunt impact. This offsets against the tendency for flutes to catch piercing blows. In armoured techniques taught in the German school of swordsmanship , the attacker concentrates on these "weak spots", resulting in a fighting style very different from unarmoured sword-fighting. Because of this weakness, most warriors wore

3519-481: The heavy use of firearms in the late 16th century. In the 17th century, warfare in Japan came to an end, but the samurai continued to use plate armour until the end of the samurai era in the 1860s, with the known last use of samurai armour occurring in 1877, during the Satsuma rebellion . By about 1420, complete suits of plate armour had been developed in Europe. A full suit of plate armour would have consisted of

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3588-412: The helmet and neckguard design was reformed to produce the so-called Nürnberg armour, many of them masterpieces of workmanship and design. As firearms became better and more common on the battlefield, the utility of full armour gradually declined, and full suits became restricted to those made for jousting which continued to develop. The decoration of fine armour greatly increased in the period, using

3657-513: The iconic suit of armour entirely encasing the wearer. Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages , especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War , from the coat of plates (popular in late 13th and early 14th century) worn over mail suits during the 14th century, a century famous for the Transitional armour , in that plate gradually replaced chain mail. In Europe , full plate armour reached its peak in

3726-599: The infantry troops of the Swiss mercenaries and the Landsknechts also took to wearing lighter suits of "three quarters" munition armour , leaving the lower legs unprotected. The use of plate armour began to decline in the early 17th century, but it remained common both among the nobility (e.g., the Emperor Ferdinand II , Louis XIII , Philip IV of Spain , Maurice of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus ) and

3795-402: The inside of the joint. German so-called Maximilian armour of the early 16th century is a style using heavy fluting and some decorative etching, as opposed to the plainer finish on 15th-century white armour . The shapes include influence from Italian styles. This era also saw the use of closed helms, as opposed to the 15th-century-style sallets and barbutes . During the early 16th century,

3864-568: The lance to the helmet. By contrast, the Rennen was a type of joust with lighter contact. Here, the aim was to hit the opponent's shield. The specialised Rennzeug was developed on the request of Maximilian, who desired a return to a more agile form of joust compared to the heavily armoured "full contact" Stechen . In the Rennzeug , the shield was attached to the armour with a mechanism of springs and would detach itself upon contact. Plate armour

3933-502: The late 15th to 16th century was heavier, and could weigh as much as 50 kg (110 lb), as it was not intended for free combat, it did not need to permit free movement, the only limiting factor being the maximum weight that could be carried by a warhorse of the period. The medieval joust has its origins in the military tactics of heavy cavalry during the High Middle Ages . Since the 15th century, jousting had become

4002-531: The linen armour in texts. Linen would decay and so leave little archaeological evidence. On the Alexander Sarcophagus and Alexander Mosaic , Alexander the Great and his soldiers wear this type of armour. Artists of the Roman imperial period rarely show this type of armour. The extant armour with this shape are made of iron plate, iron scales, or iron mail, and so the armour which decayed was likely made of more than one material. Since this armour

4071-550: The movement of armourers; the Renaissance Greenwich armour was made by a royal workshop near London that had imported Italian, Flemish and (mostly) German craftsmen, though it soon developed its own unique style. Ottoman Turkey also made wide use of plate armour, but incorporated large amounts of mail into their armour, which was widely used by shock troops such as the Janissary Corps. Plate armour gave

4140-678: The suit could be configured for a range of different uses, for example fighting on foot or on horse. By the Late Middle Ages even infantry could afford to wear several pieces of plate armour. Armour production was a profitable and pervasive industry during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A complete suit of plate armour made from well-tempered steel would weigh around 15–25 kg (33–55 lb). The wearer remained highly agile and could jump, run and otherwise move freely as

4209-480: The thirteenth century being similar in appearance to the tunic . Eventually, it made way for the pourpoint (jack or paltock) in the 14th century. The gambeson was used both as a complete armour unto itself, and underneath mail and plate in order to cushion the body and prevent chafing. Evidence for its use under armour does not appear until the mid-twelfth century in iconography. Although they are thought to have been used in Europe much earlier, gambesons underwent

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4278-608: The upper thigh. In late fifteenth-century Italy, this also became a civilian fashion. Men who were not knights wore arming doublets, probably because the garment suggested status and chivalry . The term gambeson is a loan from the Old French gambeson , gambaison , originally wambais , formed after the Middle High German term wambeis , 'doublet', in turn from Old High German wamba , 'stomach' ( cognate to womb ). The term aketon , originally

4347-430: The wearer very good protection against sword cuts, as well against spear thrusts, and provided decent defense against blunt weapons . The evolution of plate armour also triggered developments in the design of offensive weapons. While this armour was effective against cuts or strikes, their weak points could be exploited by thrusting weapons, such as estocs , poleaxes , and halberds . The effect of arrows and bolts

4416-404: The weight of the armour was spread evenly throughout the body. The armour was articulated and covered a man's entire body completely from neck to toe. In the 15th and 16th centuries, plate-armoured soldiers were the nucleus of every army. Large bodies of men-at-arms numbering thousands, or even more than ten thousand men (approximately 60% to 70% of French armies were men-at-arms and the percentage

4485-702: Was also high in other countries), were fighting on foot, wearing full plate next to archers and crossbowmen. This was commonly seen in the Western European armies, especially during the Hundred Years War , the Wars of the Roses or the Italian Wars . European leaders in armouring techniques were Northern Italians , especially from Milan , and Southern Germans , who had somewhat different styles. But styles were diffused around Europe, often by

4554-578: Was increasingly replaced by the ' buff coat ' – a leather jacket of rough suede. There are two distinctive designs of gambeson: those designed to be worn beneath armour, and those designed to be worn as independent armour. The latter tend to be thicker and higher in the collar and faced with other materials, such as leather or heavy canvas. This variant is usually referred to as "padded jack" and made of several (some say around 18, some even 30) layers of cotton, linen or wool. These jacks were known to stop even heavy arrows, and their design of multiple layers bears

4623-420: Was the first part to go, replaced by tall leather boots. By the beginning of the 18th century, only field marshals , commanders and royalty remained in full armour on the battlefield, more as a sign of rank than for practical considerations. It remained fashionable for monarchs to be portrayed in armour during the first half of the 18th century (late Baroque period), but even this tradition became obsolete. Thus,

4692-519: Was to take designs from ornament prints and other prints, as was often done. Daniel Hopfer was an etcher of armour by training, who developed etching as a form of printmaking . Other artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger produced designs for armour. The Milanese armourer Filippo Negroli , from a leading dynasty of armourers, was the most famous modeller of figurative relief decoration on armour. Reduced plate armour, typically consisting of

4761-511: Was widely used by most armies until the end of the 17th century for both foot and mounted troops such as the cuirassiers , London lobsters , dragoons , demi-lancers and Polish hussars . The infantry armour of the 16th century developed into the Savoyard type of three-quarters armour by 1600. Full plate armour was expensive to produce and remained therefore restricted to the upper strata of society; lavishly decorated suits of armour remained

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