# Armor of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564) > Kunz Lochner - dated 1549 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/kunz-lochner/armor-of-emperor-ferdinand-i-lochner-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-02 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Kunz Lochner - **Date:** dated 1549 - **Medium:** Steel, brass, leather; etched decoration - **Dimensions:** H. 170.2 cm (67 in) as mounted; weight 24 kg (52 lb. 14 oz.) - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** German, Nuremberg, mid-sixteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Arms and Armor department, Gallery 371 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A complete steel field harness made in Nuremberg in 1549 by Kunz Lochner, one of the city's most sought-after armorers, for Ferdinand, King of the Romans, King of Bohemia and Hungary, and future Holy Roman Emperor. In 1549 Ferdinand was not yet Emperor; his brother Charles V still held that title. The armor's etched decoration, a crowned double-headed eagle on the toe caps, the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece on the back, and a Madonna and Child on the breast, is a statement of Habsburg dynastic and religious authority made in the years immediately after the first Schmalkaldic War.The armor spent an unrecorded stretch of its history unidentified, misattributed for a period while in the Odenwald collection of the Counts of Erbach-Erbach to Ferdinand's son-in-law Albert V of Bavaria, before a curator at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum reattributed it to Ferdinand on physical and heraldic grounds. It entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1933 by purchase, jointly funded by the Rogers Fund and a gift from the collector and museum trustee George D. Pratt, and was published the following year by the Met's arms and armor curator Stephen V. Grancsay.Several links in the chain between Ferdinand's own possession and the Erbach collection, and between the Erbach family and the Met's 1933 purchase, are not documented in any source located for this record. Those gaps are recorded here as gaps. ## 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. - **1549** Ferdinand, King of the Romans, King of Bohemia and Hungary (later Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I) `[documented]` (commission and origin) Made by Kunz Lochner in Nuremberg, dated 1549, for Ferdinand's own use. Ferdinand held the titles King of the Romans (from 1531) and King of Bohemia and Hungary (from 1526) at the time the armor was made; he did not become Holy Roman Emperor until 1558. The armor's heraldry (a crowned Reichsadler befitting a King of the Romans, and the Golden Fleece badge of an order to which Ferdinand belonged) is consistent with this ownership. - **after 1549-19th century** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, transaction or location is documented for the armor between Ferdinand's lifetime and its recorded presence in the Erbach-Erbach collection in the nineteenth century. This gap runs roughly three centuries and is not bridged by any source consulted. - **19th century-early 20th century** Franz, Count of Erbach-Erbach, and his heirs, Erbach Castle, Odenwald, Germany `[documented]` (collection and misattribution) Held at Erbach Castle. A burgonet helmet not original to the harness was added during this period to complete the ensemble. The armor was believed during this period to have belonged to Ferdinand's son-in-law Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, a fellow Golden Fleece knight, rather than to Ferdinand himself; the misattribution assumed the armor was made for Albert as a young man, since he was known to have gained substantial weight later in life. This account is reported in the secondary literature (via Grancsay 1934); the primary Grancsay article was not independently examined for this record. - **early 20th century-1933** Franz, Count of Erbach-Erbach and heirs; reattributed but ownership route to New York undocumented `[disputed]` (reattribution and undocumented transfer) The armor was reattributed to Ferdinand I by the director of the armory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, on the basis of the wearer's build and the Reichsadler heraldry on the sabatons, matching Ferdinand's documented physique and title rather than Albert V's. Neither the reattributing curator's name, the date of the reattribution, nor the mechanism (dealer, private sale, or other channel) by which the armor left Erbach ownership and reached the New York market in time for the Metropolitan's 1933 purchase is documented in any source consulted. This record does not supply a dealer's name for this step; a separate, unrelated Erbach 'Maximilian armor' is documented as sold to William Randolph Hearst across the 1920s-1950s through named intermediaries, but no source connects that transaction to this armor, and this record treats them as separate. - **1933-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired by purchase, jointly funded by the Rogers Fund and a gift from the collector and museum trustee George D. Pratt. Published by the Metropolitan's arms and armor curator Stephen V. Grancsay in the museum's Bulletin the following year, 1934. Bashford Dean, the department's founding curator, had retired in 1927 and died in December 1928 and had no role in this specific acquisition. On permanent display in Gallery 371 as of the last verification date of this record, and flagged by the museum's own collection database as a highlight object. ## Open questions - Is there any documentation of a specific occasion, tournament, campaign or diplomatic event this armor was made for? None was located; the armor is described in the literature only in the general context of the Reformation wars and the Ottoman conflict. - Who exactly was 'the director of the armory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum' credited with reattributing the armor from Albert V of Bavaria to Ferdinand I, and in what year was that reattribution made? Not named or dated in the sources consulted. - By what route, and through which dealer or intermediary if any, did the armor pass from the Erbach family's ownership to the Metropolitan Museum's 1933 purchase? No source consulted names a channel. - Is the helmet element currently catalogued as 33.164a the non-original burgonet added during the Erbach ownership, or has it since been replaced or corrected? Sources consulted do not address the helmet's present status. - What was the total 1933 purchase price, and what portion of it came from the Rogers Fund as against George D. Pratt's gift? Not published in the sources consulted. - Does current Metropolitan Museum curatorial opinion classify this piece as parade armor, per Grancsay's 1934 title, or as functional field armor (feldharnisch), per the later German-language scholarship? The two classifications are not reconciled in any source consulted. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 23944 (fetched directly). Confirms accessionNumber 33.164a-x, isPublicDomain: true, isHighlight: true, title, medium, dimensions, credit line, department, and the full list of measured armor elements. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page, 'Kunz Lochner | Armor of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564)'. Direct fetch was blocked by the site's rate limiting during research; content is corroborated independently via the object's own CC0 image files' embedded metadata (source 17) and via secondary citation in Wikipedia (source 3). - [3] Wikipedia, 'Armor of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor'. Tertiary aggregator. Flagged for replacement with direct examination of the primary literature it cites, especially Grancsay (1934) and Gamber (1984), which were not independently accessed for this record. - [4] Wikipedia (German), 'Rustung Kaiser Ferdinands I.'. Tertiary aggregator, corroborates the Erbach provenance and the general Reformation-and-Ottoman-conflict context, citing the same underlying literature as source 3. - [5] Grancsay, Stephen V. (1934). 'A Sixteenth-Century Parade Armor.' The Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. XXIX, no. 6, pp. 102-104. Cited via Wikipedia and German Wikipedia; the original article itself is JSTOR-paywalled and was not independently accessed for this record. Editor should verify directly against the original where possible. - [6] Gamber, Ortwin (1984). 'Der Plattner Kunz Lochner - Harnische als Zeugnisse Habsburgischer Politik.' Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 80, pp. 43-44. Cited via Wikipedia; not independently accessed for this record. - [7] LaRocca, Donald J. (1995). 'An English Armor for the King of Portugal.' Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. XXX, pp. 81-96. Cited via Wikipedia for general context on Habsburg armor as dynastic and religious statement; not independently accessed for this record. - [8] Nickel, Helmut. 'Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1300-1550.' MetPublications, Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 466-467. Cited via Wikipedia for the breastplate and ornament iconography; not independently accessed for this record. - [9] Hoffmann, Carl A., Johanns, Markus, Kranz, Annette, Trepesch, Christof, and Zeidler, Oliver (2005). Als Frieden moeglich war: 450 Jahre Augsburger Religionsfrieden (Maximilianmuseum exhibition catalogue). Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, pp. 325-326. Cited via Wikipedia for the feldharnisch/field-armor classification; not independently accessed for this record. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Kunz Lochner'. Tertiary aggregator, used for the armorer's biography, family, patrons and the location of his surviving works. - [11] Wikipedia, 'George Dupont Pratt'. Tertiary aggregator, used for the donor's biography and museum trusteeships. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Bashford Dean'. Tertiary aggregator, used to confirm Dean's retirement (1927) and death (1928), establishing he had no role in this 1933 acquisition. - [13] Wikipedia, 'Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor'. Tertiary aggregator, used for the chronology of Ferdinand's titles: King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia from 1526, King of the Romans from 1531, Holy Roman Emperor from 1558. - [14] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 23198, 'Armor from a Small Garniture for Field and Tournament' (fetched directly). Confirms accession 29.151.2a-s, credit line 'Bashford Dean Memorial Collection, Gift of Mrs. Bashford Dean, 1929', dated 1548. - [15] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 35739, 'Armor for Man and Horse' (fetched directly). Confirms the combined display of accessions 29.151.2a-s, 29.158.183-.184, and 32.69a-q. - [16] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 23358, 'Horse Armor Made for Johann Ernst, Duke of Saxony-Coburg' (fetched directly). Confirms accession 32.69a-q, credit line 'Rogers Fund, 1932', dated 1548. - [17] Embedded XMP/IPTC metadata read directly from the Metropolitan Museum's own CC0 image files for accession 33.164a-x (files DP-12881-007 through DP-12881-015). Metadata confirms each file's own descriptive caption (e.g. 'Overall back view', 'Close up of breastplate', 'Detail of double headed eagle on toe cap'), the object URL matching accession 23944, and CC0 rights status (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0). --- 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.