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Conservation Status: After Treatment
Gorget
Conservation Status: After Treatment
Image © Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved.

Gorget

Artist (Landshut, Southern Germany, 1555 – 1580)
Artist (Landshut, Southern Germany, 1517 – 1562)
Date1560–1570
Mediumsteel and brass with modern leather and cordage
Dimensions15 × 27 × 24 cm (5 7/8 × 10 5/8 × 9 7/16 in.), 2 lb 6 oz (weight)
ClassificationsArms and Armor
Markings(gorget) pair of small nicks, upper edge right exterior of frontplate;
Credit LineThe John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection
Object number2014.1139.1
Description(b) Collar: 2 lb. 6 oz. *Collar is of 5 plates each front & rear, internally painted with a red-brown pigment. The mainplates are relatively shallow, shaped to the shoulders, with rounded corners below. The frontplate has a low medial ridge, and is slightly pointed at its base. The rearplate is near-level along the basal edge, which is plain and unturned on both plates. Defending the neck and throat is a set of four upwardly-overlapping, narrow curved lames. Each is bluntly-pointed on its basal edge near the straight ends and at the medial line where the lames are secured by a row of sliding-rivets. The lames are further articulated on three double sets of internal leathers. Both halves of the collar are connected by a domed stud and keyhole slots at the tops of the shoulders, the frontplate overlapping the rear. The top lame is hinged on the left, and may once have had a removable pin (now lost and replaced) so that different collar combinations could be fabricated, or to facilitate repair. This lame is locked on the right by short studs and holes on either half. The upper edge of the top lame is finished with a strong, inward, deeply-roped turn. On the top of the rearplate shoulders near the sides are sets of holes, purpose unknown, but may once have held spring-loaded posts for pauldrons, or other fittings.

Highly burnished, the defense is etched along the medial lines, and along either rear edge of the front half. These broad bands are those common to the first garniture. They are filled with a primary motif of an oblong open hexagon formed of intertwined strapwork with voluted terminals. Either end of the oblong is finished in a bilobate terminal whose ends are addorsed and voluted, connected by a short band of strapwork, from the common join of which projects a leaf. This design motif is addorsed to its neighbor to which it is connected with strapwork bands. The diamond-shaped interval is filled either with a four-armed foliate sprig or strapwork arabesque. The plain, blackened ground is filled with tendril scrolls. The bands are themselves edged by narrow, recessed blackened lines. Below the turned edge of the top lame is etched a narrow band of repeated addorsed, recurved scroll-work tendrils connected together by a thin longitudinal piece of strapwork, all on a blackened plain ground, framed en suite.
Label TextThe gorget was a neckguard worn under the torso armor, helping the armor sit more comfortably on the shoulders. It was worn over a padded jacket that also provided cushioning and protection. Even after other armor was abandoned, a reduced version of the gorget continued to be worn as a badge of rank as late as the 1800s and even the 1900s.ProvenanceEx-collection the duc de Noailles (France) the dealer Foury (Paris) Clarence H. Mackay (Roslyn, L.I.) Purchased by the Armory from the estate of Clarence H. Mackay, through Jacques Seligmann & Co. (New York City) on 1 April 1940, their number A-5/115. Collection transfer from Higgins Armory, Janaury 2014.
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