Armour And Masculinity In The Italian Renaissance

In the book, Armour & Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance, Springer examines the political and cultural implications of armour within the sixteenth century in early modern Italy. She highlights the various uses and meanings of armour through this period; from self-fashioning to various ideologies of the body. The first half of the text, Springer explains the various forms of armoured bodies throughout the sixteenth century, with the central focus being towards luxury armour. She highlights arguably three typologies of armour; Classical, Sacred and Grotesque. Each of these are explained as various idealizations of image and appearance through the wearing of the armour. The classical image with the powerfully articulated musculature, formalized stomach, and rectangular chest reflected a physical ideal that was associated metaphorically with the highest military and moral virtue. The Sacred image which through the visual representations of saints and the textual …show more content…
Although she discussed the rise of each version she seemed to omit the importance of the insecurities surrounding that particular type of armour in relation to the political leaders and rulers. For example, when Springer is explaining the classical body and how it was the most distinctive type of Italian armour developed in the Renaissance , she does not explain further as to why these insecurities were so prevailing throughout the rest of the century. This is an weakness that is only shown in the first part of the text, perhaps a combination of both text about self-fashioning, which is highly based upon images and insecurities, and text on the typologies would lead to a better understanding of the complexity of masculinity and power in armour during those three variations of the body. (Classical, Sacred and