[Illustration: _Fig. 8. Cape of chain mail, with extra wide links at the collar, and ornamental links of brass around the lower edge._]
To protect against blows, therefore, it became necessary to produce a rigid protection. The primitive state of iron metallurgy did not permit the making of more than small pieces of iron at a time. Nevertheless, iron head coverings were already in use by the eleventh century, and from that time on pieces of plate armor increased in size and number. After the head defense, the most vulnerable part of a rider’s body (for remember that only knights could afford mail, and knights fought on horseback) was the knees. Have you ever had a really hard bump on the kneecap, and, if you remember one, should you have liked to go on fighting just after receiving it? The knight represented in the brass of Fig. 7, who died in 1289, wears knee-guards, and rests his head on his great “pot-helm”, which was normally attached to his body by a chain, so that it could not easily be lost if he took it off to get a breath of air. The City Art Museum has no specimens of plate armor of this early period.
[Illustration: _Fig. 9. A helmet called a salade: made like a deep salad bowl, with a slit to see through._]
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it became the fashion to wear a long cloth garment, called a _surcoat_, over armor. Pictures and statues of this period show armored figures only with such surcoats, and it is, therefore, impracticable to follow the exact development of the pieces of plate armor which were added to reinforce the chain mail. By the beginning of the fifteenth century complete outfits of plate armor were in use, but the earliest surviving suits of the so-called “Gothic” armor date from about 1460. They are exceedingly rare. The City Art Museum possesses only a gauntlet of about 1450 and a helmet (Fig. 9) from about 1475, yet we feel lucky to have these two pieces, for “Gothic” armor is not only rare: it is very beautiful. It was at this period that armorers did their best work, from every standpoint. It was best metallurgically, with inner surfaces of pure soft iron, but with outer surfaces skillfully converted into almost glass-hard steel. It was best functionally, for its simple clean curved lines were admirably designed to turn a blow harmlessly aside, with no unnecessary decorative forms to catch descending edge or point. It was best artistically (as is usually the case with things that function perfectly), depending for beauty on its own pure sculptural lines rather than on extraneous ornament.