Images of Medieval Armor

 

These portraits are from a collection I picked up on a recent sojourn to southern France, near the walled fortress at Mondragon along the Rhone River. The credit for these wonderful illustrations goes to a brilliant artist named August Racinet, whom I was sadly unable to meet, despite my best efforts.

I've impressed upon my curator to include August's descriptions, and although I speak some French and believe I understand well his notes, I've decided not to translate them, lest I get something horribly wrong.

While many of the illustrations are accurate, I fear that Racinet was a bit of a dreamer, as many of his more fanciful creations cannot be made by even the finest of the king's armorers.

[Note from Bartholomew's spright: The images are from a set of very interesting playing cards that Bartholomew and I actually did find at Mondragon, near the city of Orange, in southern France. The reproductions depict armor and costumes from the time of Chalemagne to Louis XIII, and were originally published in a collection from A. RACINET in 1888. Bartholomew doesn't recognize that some of the images postdate him by a few centuries; he simply considers Racinet a "fanciful dreamer." For more information about the card set, be sure to check the "info" cards included in the thumbnail section. To view a card in greater detail, simply click on it. BTW, these images work really well with After Dark's Art Critic screen saver, once you ditch the little critic.]