SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Starting today visitors will have the opportunity to see marvels of late medieval and Renaissance craftsmanship from one of the largest collections of arms and armor in the United States when The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum opens at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

With more than eighty works, including several full suits of armor, the exhibition brings together an impressive array of armor and weapons from late medieval and early modern Europe and traces the evolution of armor in the 1300s and 1400s in tandem with developments in metalworking technology and advances in weaponry. The Age of Armor will be on view in the Cowden Gallery at SAMA through May 12, 2024.

The Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum comprises more than 1,500 objects from the medieval, Renaissance and later periods in Europe. The collection also includes important objects from ancient Egypt and Greece, India, and Japan.From the warriors of ancient Greek legends, to the knights of the Middle Ages, to the superheroes of today’s popular culture, the idea of personal body armor has an enduring hold on the human imagination. Armor is as old as human civilization, and has been used in various forms in societies around the globe, but full suits of articulated steel plates were made only in Europe, and only for a brief time in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. This exhibition explores the story of armor in its golden age.

Suits of armor are among the most popular objects with museumgoers, but there are few significant collections of armor in the Americas. In 2014, the Worcester Art Museum acquired the Higgins Armory Collection. While most of this rare collection is in storage awaiting the creation of a dedicated arms and armor gallery, there is a unique opportunity to share these objects with a national and international public. Visitors will discover the diverse and often surprising stories embedded in these powerful objects. Far from the ungainly exoskeleton we often imagine today, the suit of armor was made to be sleek and stylish—painstakingly engineered, elegantly designed, and treasured as the expression of its owner’s taste, sophistication, and prowess.

‘Maximilian’ Field Armor holding a Warhammer for a Horseman, Southern German, about 1525–1530, armor: steel, iron, and leather with modern restorations, 64 lb., 14 oz (weight), warhammer: etched and blackened steel, 56.6 × 10.5 cm (22 5/16 × 4 1/8 in.), 2 lb., 12 oz (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.111 and 2014.469.

Master “MR”, German, from the area of Nuremberg, Comb Morion for the Guard of Christian I or II, Electors of Saxony,  about 1585–1595, blackened steel with etched and gilded decoration, brass, textile and leather, 27.9 × 24.4 × 35.7 cm (11 × 9 5/8 × 14 1/16 in.), 4 lb. (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.48. Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved.

Workshops of Wolf and Peter von Speyer or Wolf Peppinghorn, Rennzeug (armor for the ‘joust of war’), about 1590–1600, steel, iron, leather, black paint, textile and horsehair stuffing, 93 lb., 1 oz (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.1154.

Wolfgang Stäntler, Swept-Hilt Sword for the Munich Town Guard,  about 1600, steel, iron with blueing, and wood, 101.9 × 85.1 × 4.5 × 18 cm (40 1/8 × 33 1/2 × 1 3/4 × 7 1/16 in.), 3 lb., 3 oz (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.52. Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved. 

Pikeman’s Armor with Helmet for a Harquebusier, later decorated for ceremonial use, Netherlandish, about 1625–1650, decorated in 1700s, steel, iron and paint with modern leather, 16 lb., 10 oz (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.1132.

Nagasone Tojiro Mitsumasa, Helmet in the form of a Sea Conch Shell, 1618, iron with traces of lacquer, textiles, 22.9 × 30.5 × 26.7 cm (9 × 12 × 10 1/2 in.), 3 lb., 13 oz (weight), The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.89.1. Image © 2021 Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved.