ART OF WAR
Exhibits emphasize the beauty of battle gear.
Centuries ago, when swords and lances were the weapons of choice, no respectable warrior wore camouflage fatigues to blend in with his surroundings. Stealth wasn’t in his vocabulary.
In dueling shows at Houston museums this summer, fantastical suits of armor open windows into eras on opposite sides of the world when legendary fighters trumpeted their presence in custom finery that rivals the fussiest designs on today’s fashion runways. These were the original Darth Vaders, encasing themselves in forms that were elegant and splendidly spiritual.
“They would stand in front of you and challenge you to come on,” said Dirk Van Tuerenhout, a curator at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. He’s overseeing “Samurai: The Way of the Warrior,” a show of magnificent Japanese armor from Stibbert Museum in Florence, Italy.
Medieval European armor worn by Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V holds court in one of the rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s “Habsburg Splendor” exhibition, which also includes jousting suits worn by a couple of 15th-century archdukes.
Because the warriors of both cultures fought from horseback and on foot, their armor served the same basic function — protecting the vitals, especially the head, face and chest, while providing as much movement flexibility as possible.
Both exhibitions feature suits designed mostly as ceremonial wear that would have been displayed proudly in homes most of the time. Much of the Japanese armor hails from the peaceful, 265-year Edo Period (1603-1868) when the samurai didn’t have a lot of fighting to do. The Habsburg armor reflects the conspicuous pageantry of tournaments that celebrated a previous era’s gallantry.
Tuerenhout, an anthropologist, would prefer to see a few battle scars. But from a decorative perspective, these suits are awesome works of art. Each contains dozens of components crafted by top artisans in precious materials that reflect the advancements and interests of their time and place.
Some of the colorful Japanese designs incorporate miles of rare silk plus water buffalo horns, horse hair, feathers and tortoise shells, conjuring the spirits of nature. Theirs was clearly a culture close to the Earth, although for a brief time when firearms were used, their armor also rendered them “walking battleships,” Tuerenhout said. They didn’t even hide behind shields. “Your protection was dealing blows, not taking them,” he added.
The Europeans, meanwhile, trimmed their armor with gold from their New World conquests, embellishing their highly polished metal with refined details. These suits are more obviously machinelike, composed of as many as 80 pieces that fit smoothly together.
Like the samurai, European aristocracy depended on families of artisans who handed down their talents over generations. Maximilian’s assembled armor is signed by the late 15th-, early 16th-century court armorer Lorenz Helmschmid, while Charles V’s “light half-armor” is signed by the armorer’s grandson, Desiderius Helmschmid.
MFAH director Gary Tinterow called Maximilian’s parade armor the finest of its kind. “To add gilding was an enormous luxury; and it was an enor- mous feat to create these big suits of armor,” he said.
The MFAH show’s lead curator, David Bomford, said the Habsburg armor gives visitors a sense of standing next to historical figures. “Charles V is always pictured by Titian and the other great European painters as a sort of titanic figure, but you can see he was actually quite short,” Bomford said. (Maximilian looks taller and more slender.)
The helmets of both shows are especially intimidating. In the samurai genre, they’re fittingly called spectacular helmets. The HMNS show features signed examples from several dynastic schools of kabuto domed helmets. Three of the 20 known helmets fashioned from single sheets of steel by the late 17th-century master armorer Ryoei emerge gorgeously from minimal material — a quiet contrast in a room full of flamboyant headpieces designed to make their wearers look like monsters or gods.
The Europeans played head games with opponents, too. The 16th century “All’antica morion of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol,” one of the most marvelous objects in the Habsburg show, was likely made by a Northern Italian artist who was clearly a master of iron work. A dragon sits atop the Roman-style helmet, while the head of a bigger monster forms the brim. Mythological characters including the nymph Amphitrite and the god Poseidon also appear on the blued, embossed gilded and silvered piece.
Then there are the weapons.
“Warfare is not a clean business,” Tuerenhout said as he pointed out swords with nonslip, silk-wrapped shagreen (stingray skin) handles and a blade etched with a depiction of Mount Fuji. He appreciates the “nerdy science” involved in making objects as beautiful as they were functional.
“Would you make that thinking it would be the last thing somebody sees before the lights go out?” he wondered.
In the Habsburg show, a coral-handled saber with its jeweled scabbard looks purely decorative by comparison. Whoever held it wouldn’t have stood a chance against the Japanese.