It is perhaps worth mentioning here that a joust was not a duel. It was a combat sport played by friends. The tournament host was known as the maintenator; the guests who came to the contest were aventuriers – knights errant or adventurers.
Displaying complete suits of armour on equine models is not a modern invention. In the armoury that Elector Christian I established in the New Stables in 1588, precious ceremonial and tournament armours were displayed on carved horses. This not only made the display more lifelike, it also paid tribute to the horses who played such a significant role in the victory or defeat of their riders: “. . . much depended on the training and good will of the knight’s mount. Encased in its armour, weighed down by its rider and his 100 kilograms of protection, surrounded by those attending to the horseman, by the blast of trumpets and the ringing of bells around its neck, sometimes the charger ‘refused to advance’. In one case, the horse is reported to have ‘rebelled so violently that the tournament could not be continued without great danger’. But even when the horses had been brought out into the field, they often broke away and turned around, putting themselves and their riders at grave risk.”
The two sets of armour you see here were made by the Dresden armourer Hans Rosenberger and his Wittenberg colleague Sigmund Rockenberger between 1550 and 1560. They are heavy – especially the German-style helmet and the breastplate, which was finished in lead to achieve better weight distribution. In this form of jousting the rider had to withstand blows from a lance as thick as a man’s arm. August of Saxony and the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol were the last princes to organise German-style tournaments. At other courts, the much less dangerous tilting had already become the norm.
Anzogenrennen literally means “dressed jousting”. The name is derived from the fact that in this form of jousting a protective targe, or shield, was bolted onto the left side of the breastplate. The targe was made of wood covered in cloth. Its purpose was to ward off blows from a lance that was more than four metres long. All the fabrics worn by the two riders and adorning the horses that you see here have been specially made for this display. They are copies of the fabrics in a painting by Heinrich Göding the Elder, which you can also see in this exhibition. It is the painting in the middle, above the showcase against the front wall of this room.
