New Acquisition
Armour of the Teenage King Sigismund II Augustus
Special showing, the Senators’ Hall
February 18–28, 2021
free admission
In 2020, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki turned to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with a request to hand over the Renaissance armor of the young King Sigismund II Augustus. He appealed to a resolution in the Pact between the Government of Poland and the Government of Hungary for cultural and scientific collaboration, drawn up in Budapest on October 13, 1992, with regard for the intact national heritage of Hungary and Poland, on December 25, 2020. Viktor Orbán signed a decree to transfer the armor belonging to Poland.
In February 2021, the decision was made to transfer the piece to the Wawel Royal Castle. This gesture by Viktor Orbán is a clear sign of the friendship joining the two nations, and also, indirectly, the Hungarian and Polish prime ministers; it reasserts the two countries’ bonds, both in society and in culture.
King Sigismund II Augustus’s suit is an outstanding example of armor being forged to resemble court garb. The steel plates were wrought in the manner of a suit of soft cloth, stitched (cut?) to a slanted grate, filled with four-leaf designs. This geometrical decoration, rounded off with grasses and gilded flora ornaments, contrasts with the smooth, polished background.
Of all the armaments of Sigismund II Augustus, apart from the ones of his youth presented here, only a full rider’s apparel made by Kunz Lochner in Nuremberg has survived, gifted to King John III of Sweden on the occasion of his nuptials with Catherine Jagiellon (now stored at the Royal Armory in Stockholm).
In reality, as outstanding weapons expert Bruno Thomas showed in 1939, the armor was ordered in 1533 by the king of Czechia and Hungary (later the emperor) Ferdinand I for the nuptials of his daughter Elizabeth with the son of Sigismund I, the thirteen-year-old Sigismund II Augustus, crowned King of Poland in his father’s lifetime. The breastplate and sleeves hold an interlocking monogram with the letters "E" and "S" (Elisabetha, Sigismundus).
