About the Artwork
Carved in Naples, this funerary sculpture depicts a knight in his fashionable equipment. He wears a mail shirt and leggings under hardened leather arm and leg defenses embossed with elegant blossoms and scrolling ivy tendrils. The decoration on the sculpture would have been brightly painted and even gilded — much like the real-life model. Although few examples survive, such colorful and resilient leather armor was popular among the martial classes in the 1300s, and remained in use even as steel plates became the dominant form of protection in the 1400s. The knight’s brigandine, a garment protecting the torso that consists of overlapping iron or steel plates riveted between layers of textile or leather, bears the coat of arms of the princely German Anhalt family. His South Italian tomb effigy suggests he died far from home. As if asleep, the knight lies with his head on a cushion covered in patterned fabric from Italy or the Near East, attesting to the movement of people, goods, and ideas across Europe and the Mediterranean in the medieval era.
Tomb Effigy of a Recumbent Knight
ca. between 1350 and 1375
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Italian
Italian
Marble
Overall: 76 × 22 3/8 × 10 inches (193 × 56.8 × 25.4 cm) Overall (pedestal): 15 3/4 × 30 × 87 inches (40 × 76.2 × 221 cm)
Sculpture
European Sculpture and Dec Arts
City of Detroit Purchase
27.1
This work is in the public domain.
Markings
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Provenance
(Alfredo Pallesi, Bologna, Italy)
1927-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Suggest FeedbackPublished References
The Art of Chivalry. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1984, cat. no. 13, p. 14 (ill.).
Darr, A.P., P. Barnet, A. Boström, C. Avery, et al. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Detroit Institute of Arts, 2 vols. London, 2002, 2 vols., I, cat. 45.
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Italian, Tomb Effigy of a Recumbent Knight, ca. between 1350 and 1375, marble. Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase, 27.1.
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