# Field Armor in Maximilian Style > Augsburg armorers' workshops (helmet attributed to Lorenz Helmschmid) - c. 1510-15 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/augsburg-armor-workshops-helmschmid/field-armor-maximilian-style-cleveland/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-05 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Augsburg armorers' workshops (helmet attributed to Lorenz Helmschmid) - **Date:** c. 1510-15 - **Medium:** Fluted steel with leather straps and a mail panel - **Dimensions:** Overall height 170.2 cm (67 in.) - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** German, early 16th century (the reign of Emperor Maximilian I, 1493-1519) - **Current location:** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A nearly complete field armor of fluted steel, made in Germany around 1510-15 and catalogued by the Cleveland Museum of Art with its own question mark: 'Augsburg(?).' Its title carries the era's most misunderstood cataloguing term, 'Maximilian style' - a modern label for a fashionable fluted surface treatment of the early sixteenth century, not a claim that Emperor Maximilian I ever owned or commissioned this specific suit. No owner at all is documented for this armor before the twentieth century.Only the helmet carries any maker attribution, and even that is hedged: Cleveland states it is 'believed to be' the work of the real, documented Augsburg court armorer Lorenz Helmschmid, on stylistic grounds, unsigned. The rest of the suit's Augsburg origin sits awkwardly against the Metropolitan Museum's own description of fluting as a Nuremberg specialty - the likely reason for Cleveland's question mark. The documented chain of ownership is short and modern: William Randolph Hearst, a Sotheby's London sale in 1961, the Washington architect David Norton Yerkes, his daughter Catharine Y. Kulski, and Cleveland's 2012 purchase through the J. H. Wade Fund, four years after the museum had already borrowed the piece for exhibition.This record treats the maker attribution, the city attribution and the ownership gap as three separate, honestly graded uncertainties, and treats the object's own name as a description of a decade's fashion, not a description of an emperor's collection. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1510-15** Made in Germany, probably Augsburg; helmet believed to be the work of Lorenz Helmschmid `[unknown]` (manufacture) Cleveland's own culture line carries a question mark against Augsburg. The helmet attribution to Helmschmid is stated by the museum as a belief, not a documented or signed fact. No original owner or patron is recorded. - **c. 1515-1951 or before** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, collection, inventory or dealer record has been identified connecting the object across roughly four centuries between its manufacture and its documented appearance in the Hearst collection. - **by 1951-1961** William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), San Francisco, California `[documented]` (collection) Listed by Cleveland as the armor's first documented owner. Hearst died in 1951; the object was sold, evidently from his estate's continuing dispersal of his holdings, a decade later. No source consulted records when or from whom Hearst acquired it. - **1961-06-09** Sold at Sotheby's, London, lot 153 `[documented]` (auction) The sale that moved the armor from the Hearst estate's holdings into David Norton Yerkes's collection. Cleveland's provenance record gives the date and lot number but not a price. - **1961-2011** David Norton Yerkes (1911-2011), Washington, D.C. `[documented]` (purchase) Yerkes was a practicing architect, principal of the Washington firm Deigert and Yerkes, who assembled a private arms and armor collection. He bought this armor at the 1961 Sotheby's sale. - **2011-2012** Catharine Y. Kulski (Yerkes's daughter, by inheritance) `[documented]` (inheritance) Kulski inherited the armor on her father's death in 2011 and sold it to Cleveland the following year. The piece had already been lent to Cleveland in 2008, four years before this sale, for the exhibition Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria. - **2012-present** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased from Kulski using the J. H. Wade Fund. No purchase price has been published in the sources consulted. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1961-06-09** Sotheby's, - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted - Hammer: Not published in the sources consulted - With premium: Not published in the sources consulted - Sale, London, lot 153. The consignor is understood, from Cleveland's own sequencing of its provenance list, to have been the estate or continuing dispersal of William Randolph Hearst's holdings; this is an inference from the order of Cleveland's provenance entries, not a statement made outright in the source. The buyer was David Norton Yerkes. No hammer price, premium or estimate for this lot was located. ## Open questions - What price did Cleveland pay for this armor via the J. H. Wade Fund in 2012? Not published in the sources consulted. - What price did David Norton Yerkes pay at the Sotheby's London sale of 9 June 1961, lot 153? Not published in the sources consulted. - When and from whom did William Randolph Hearst acquire this armor, and was it bought singly or as part of a larger lot of arms and armor? Not documented in the sources consulted. - Is the Augsburg attribution for the body of the suit correct, given that fluted armor of this kind is independently described as a Nuremberg specialty? The evidence located for this record does not resolve the question Cleveland's own question mark records. - What specific stylistic or documentary evidence underlies the attribution of the helmet to Lorenz Helmschmid, beyond the museum's own hedged 'believed to be'? No published connoisseurship argument for the attribution was located. - Was this suit made for an identifiable original owner or patron, or was it produced as unattributed court or arsenal stock? No original owner is documented for the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. ## Sources - [1] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record for accession 2012.38, 'Field Armor in Maximilian Style.' - [2] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record for accession 2012.38.a, 'Field Armor in Maximilian Style: Helmet.' - [3] Cleveland Museum of Art, full catalogue (print) view of accession 2012.38, carrying the object's provenance list (William Randolph Hearst; Sotheby's London, 9 June 1961, lot 153; David Norton Yerkes; Catharine Y. Kulski; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2012) and exhibition history (Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria, 2008). - [4] Wikimedia Commons, file record (MediaWiki API, extmetadata) for 'File:Germany, Augsburg(?), early 16th century - Field Armor in Maximilian Style - 2012.38 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif,' license CC0, credited to clevelandart.org. - [5] Wikimedia Commons, file record (MediaWiki API, extmetadata) for 'File:Germany, Augsburg(?), early 16th century - Field Armor in Maximilian Style- Helmet - 2012.38.a - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif,' license CC0. - [6] Google Arts and Culture, asset page for 'Field Armor in Maximilian Style,' mirroring the Cleveland Museum's own catalogue text, date, medium and CC0 rights statement. - [7] Cleveland Museum of Art, full catalogue (print) view of accession 2012.37, 'Cuirassier's Armor,' the companion object purchased the same year from the same fund, carrying fuller published provenance for the same Hearst-Yerkes-Kulski chain (Archduke Eugen of Austria, Castle of Hohenwerfen; Anderson Galleries, New York, 1927; Hearst, 1956). - [8] Cleveland Museum of Art, exhibition record for 'Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria,' 24 February - 1 June 2008. - [9] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dirk H. Breiding, 'Fashion in European Armor, 1500-1600,' Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Discusses the origin and misleading nature of the 'Maximilian armor' label and the development of fluting. - [10] Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Techniques of Decoration on Arms and Armor,' Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Describes embossing, raising and fluting technique. - [11] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for object 35922, 'Armor,' German, Nuremberg, ca. 1520 and later, describing fluted armor as 'a specialty of Nuremberg.' - [12] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for object 23213, 'Sallet of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519),' attributed to Lorenz Helmschmid, German, Augsburg, ca. 1490-95. - [13] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for object 23208, 'Pair of Tournament Pauldrons (Shoulder Defenses),' marked by Lorenz Helmschmid, German, Augsburg, ca. 1500. - [14] Philadelphia Museum of Art, object record for object 309965, 'Horse Armor (Bard),' 1507, by Wilhelm von Worms the Elder, German (Nuremberg), including the documented account of Duke Ulrich of Wurttemberg's planned 1507-08 journey with Emperor Maximilian I to Rome. - [15] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record for accession 1916.1714, 'Partial Suit of Armor in Maximilian Style,' German, Nuremberg, c. 1525. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, file record for 'Archduke Maximillian III jousting armor - Cleveland Museum of Art,' a separate Cleveland object (jousting armor by Anton Pfeffenhauser, Augsburg, 1571), cited here only to document and exclude it from this record. - [17] Wikipedia, 'Lorenz Helmschmied,' for biographical dates and the succession of the Augsburg workshop. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly monograph on the Helmschmid family. - [18] Wikipedia, 'Maximilian armour,' for the alternative naming theory linking the style's name to Maximilian II rather than Maximilian I, and its attribution to named historians (Oakeshott, Niehoff, Quaas, Silver). Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the primary scholarly literature. - [19] Legacy.com / Washington Post, obituary of David Norton Yerkes (1911-2011), Washington, D.C. architect, principal of Deigert and Yerkes. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.