Jousting Knights Lived Dangerously!
 

The world-famous Schloss Ambras, Tyrol, whose unique arms and armor collection and Kunst- und Wunderkammer (art chamber) Archduke Ferdinand II transformed into the first weapons museum in history in the late 16th century, had a special exhibition named Ritter! (Knights!) in summer 2013.
The catalog is still available and highly recommended, even though its texts are in German.


Attached please find, in order of appearance:


- Some views of Schloss Ambras, which is recorded as early as the 10th century, and of its arms and armor collection

- a painting of a joust at Schloss Tratzberg, Tyrol, by Hans Schäufelein, 1509

- Gobelin tapestries with the Habsburg pedigree




Best Christmas Eve wishes from
Michael

Pictures from the summer exhibition
 

- The finest Late-Gothic suit of armor in existence; it was made for the Emperor Maximilian I

- close-ups

- page from Konrad Kyeser: Bellifortis (The Strong Warrior), Eichstätt, Bavaria, 1405

- mechanical breast pieces for the joust

- costume helmet, fox

- two foot combatants: original jousting harnesses, and equiped with original weapons

- foot combatants, close-up

- nasal helmet

- from the jousting book Freydal of Maximilian I

- tournament

- jousting toys, two runners, cast-bronze, ca. 1500

- Hungarian winged pavese

- wadding worn under jousting helmets

- golden forehead crest as a lady's gift for taking part in a joust

- Gregor Baci, a Hungarian Nobleman

According to tradition, the man portrayed is the Hungarian nobleman Gregor Baci, who was healed after having a lance pierce his right eye during a tournament. In the inventory of 1621 he is identified as an Hungarian hussar, who suffered this injury while fighting against the Turks. In the case of portraits of unusual people the interest of the collector, Archduke Ferdinand II, was not focussed on the painting as a work of art but rather on the person portrayed, his special destiny and his deeds. These were simply the qualities that made him a celebrity and raised him above the level of the average person. This desire to preserve the whole person and his deeds for posterity was, of course, also the motivation for collecting weapons and armour of famous rulers in his heroes armoury (wikipedia).

Magnificent !
But no wonder Maximilian had such an elegant taste; his mother was Portuguese ;) :D

gregor's granny always told him that he could put somebodies eye out with that thing. :D bet it smarted a bit.

Grrreat, and thanks, both Kronckew and 'Nando,


Your comments sure have brightened up my Christmas Eve! And I was afraid nobody would be gonna care today ...

My old service guns don't have too much to add either; they prefer keeping silent on everything they've been put thru 400 to 700 years ago but you can see the score is written in the scratches on their stocks and barrels ... Those visions sometimes make me kinda tremble ...


Now go on celebrate with your loved ones, everybody!


Best,
Michael

The catalog seems to be available only via the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (Vienna), the price is euro 24.95 plus postage.

m

We are (also) celebrating here :cool: .

those photos were just stunning and i'm jealous as i'll likely never get to see it in person.

the bavarian genes in me admire the beauty and want to go out for a beer.

the prussian gene lurking in the background wonders how they defended the castle with all them windows and gaps in the walls. (and no moat monster).

aw heck. tonite i'll be bavarian. or maybe tyrolean - i am after all half austrian.

http://cache.boston.com/universal/si...4_16454637.jpg

Fröliche Weihnachten! und ein Gutes Neue Jahr!

Grusse Gott,

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s...elsigpic-1.png

Can there be an ethnic mixture more promising?! :cool: :eek:
PROST - cheers!

m

Great footage Michael :)
Aaaah to be a German, es wäre toll gewesen :D

A friendly german send me this last year after a great deal on a wheel lock i bought from him, Wunderbar :cool:

"When the snow falls wunderbar
And the children happy are,
When is Glatteis on the street,
And we all a Glühwein need,
Then you know, it is soweit:
She is here, the Weihnachtszeit

Every Parkhaus ist besetzt,
Weil die people fahren jetzt
All to Kaufhof, Mediamarkt,
Kriegen nearly Herzinfarkt.
Shopping hirnverbrannte things
And the Christmasglocke rings.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music, see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht,
Merry Christmas allerseits...

Mother in the kitchen bakes
Schoko-, Nuss- and Mandelkeks
Daddy in the Nebenraum
Schmücks a Riesen-Weihnachtsbaum
He is hanging auf the balls,
Then he from the Leiter falls...

Finally the Kinderlein
To the Zimmer kommen rein
And it sings the family
Schauerlich: "Oh, Christmastree!"
And everybody in the house
Is packing die Geschenke aus.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music, see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht
Merry Christmas allerseits...

Mama finds under the Tanne
Eine brandnew Teflon-Pfanne,
Papa gets a Schlips and Socken,
Everybody does frohlocken.

President speaks in TV,
All around is Harmonie,
Bis mother in the kitchen runs:
Im Ofen burns the Weihnachtsgans.

And so comes die Feuerwehr
With Tatü, tata daher,
And they bring a long, long Schlauch
And a long, long Leiter auch.
And they crying: "Wasser marsch!"
Weihnachtsfest is now im Arsch.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music, see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht
Merry Christmas allerseits!"

What ... beer ? No ! :o
I will eat my 8 cms. thick fish cod with a dry fruity Douro white and will follow with a (14º vol.) red, also from Douro ... to keep in the same region. Will accompany Christmas dessert with a sparkling brut from the Bairrada area :cool: .

i'll have a nice dow's reserve porto with my americano pizza (mostly pepperoni & sliced wursts) tonight to toast our poor portuguese compadre sadly forced to eat fish. (i'm saving the roast duck, sprouts, and taters & a large bottle of stout for tommorrow - and mebbe a few more portos).

the douro valley is beautiful, tho how they grow grapes on those sheer cliff faces is a mystery. ;) i did note the people tending the vines all wore safety ropes to keep from falling off. :D

I have for lunch roast wild game and the the rest of the sparkling whine bottle. Maybe not an orthodox mix but ...

Those are the younger folks. You haven't been there long enough to notice that the elder have one leg shorter than the other :D .

I've actually seen this happen. Back in the 90's I had a booth at a local renaissance festival. The jousting troupe that did the shows there was a full contact group. One of the participants had a lance shard pass through the vision slot/occularum of his close helmet and go in a millimeter under his eye. He was taken out of the show on a stretcher with his helmet still on as one end of the shard was protruding from it and they did not want to risk making things worse before a doctor looked at it. The fella was very lucky, he did not loose the eye. I had read historical accounts of this sort of thing happening but actually seeing it was positively unsettling. The dangers of engaging in that activity haven't changed in 4-500 years.

It is getting hard to say something substantial after what you wrote.
As I realized at an early stage how dangerous full contact sports and reenactments are I completely resigned from watching such shows, though I do admire those guys for being totally devoted to their profession and the martial arts.

m

Being an armourer I worked closely with them and have done work for a number of todays pro jousters. They're a very different animal. I don't know if they're reflective of what the mindset of 15/16th/17th century jousters would have been like. They're pretty much fearless, or at least broadcast that image, and don't seem to think about what they're going to do much more than I would about driving a car. I've wondered personally several times in the past, when reshaping/fixing damaged harness for these guys if that really is how the jouster of that day may have been. The fella I mentioned in my first post actually returned to doing it for a living after he recovered. There's the famous story of William Marshal having to have a blacksmith pound his great helm somewhat back into shape while he had it on after a joust just so he could get it back off his head again. While not exactly the severity parity between the two events, the mindsets are not completely different. The stuff of pure conjecture I suppose.

Thank you so much for sharing both your inside experience and your mind. I believe you must be right with your formation of hypotheses concerning these guys.

Best,
m

An episode with macabre contours :eek: