"The Second Skin": Some Considerations on the Symbolism of Armor in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there is a real turning point in the war art that marks the shifting from a conception of armor as a practical device to a conception of the armor as a symbolic device of corporal defense. The starting point for these reflections is the observation that, in relation to the medieval armature, the armor of "modern times" transcends warrior immediate immediate and exceeds the strict laws of Christian symbolism of the miles Christianus, both by the form and by the figurative repertoire which she displays as a representation of the self.