The Prince’s Prosthetic Body: Orthopedic Armor and Material Self-Fashioning in Sixteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

Commonly seen to display military prowess or chivalric virtue, parade armor of the sixteenth century here is considered for its impact on the wearer’s own physiology and psychology. Through juxtaposing the ergonomic features of muscle cuirasses and children’s harnesses with courtly etiquette rules, humanist educational regimes, and orthopedic devices in medicine, this paper reveals armor’s stakes in fashioning the princely body by means of physical discipline rather than visual representation. Plate armor, by “correcting” posture and mannering comportment, aided in molding an exemplary disposition expected to incite subjects to imitation.