Now that we’ve installed our new Medieval Galleries, featuring a selection of objects from the Higgins Armory Collection, we have started to incorporate arms and armor into other parts of the Museum as well. Come check out the helmets recently added to the [remastered] paintings gallery. The one shown below is from the early 1600s and weighs a punishing 10 ½ lbs. It’s a siege helmet, for use in fortifications rather than on the march, and it’s made to be proof against musket balls. In fact, there are two bullet marks in the rear, evidence that it saved someone’s life more than once.
Watch the galleries over the next few months as we begin to install some suits of armor to keep company with our spectacular collection of Renaissance paintings!
- Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art
Photographs: Kim Noonan / Worcester Art Museum
