Rubens’ Treatment of Antique Armor

Abstract

By the beginning of the seventeenth century ancient armor was hardly a novelty to artists. It had been reproduced with considerable accuracy, in Italian painting at least, since the fifteenth century, and numerous examples of ancient art showing armored figures were extant, appreciated, and well represented in the illustrated books of the day. Rubens’ studies and interest in antiquity might lead one to assume that he would have been accurate in his depiction of such armor even if particular sources were hard to trace. His originality and extraordinary power of assimilation also might presuppose that he combined several unrelated pieces and even transformed them into a wholly new suit of armor. Such an element would have lost its resemblance to any specific prototype and yet remain technically accurate, as befitted a scholar. Such, however, is not quite the case.