MY CHILDHOOD FAVORITE IS BACK!!!!

Dusting Off a Horseman for New Battles

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: September 13, 2012

The Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is such a busy place that it’s easy to miss the artworks periodically on view there. Two 1967-68 silk-screens of Warhol’s “Flowers” — a teaser to “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years,” opening on Tuesday — were recently hung on the eastern side of the hall. A colossal statue of a pharaoh, weighing about nine tons, sits regally on the north side.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Armor for the Joust of Peace,” from about 1500, to be displayed at the Met.

The pharaoh is about to be stared down by a German jouster on a colorfully clad horse. Starting Monday installers will begin putting together “Armor for the Joust of Peace,” from about 1500 and purchased by the Met in 1904, one of the museum’s earliest acquisitions. As the collection grew in scope and importance, this armor was banished to storage; it has been nearly 25 years since it has been on display.

“It’s evocative and wonderful, but when we reinstalled the galleries in 1991 and studied the collection, we decided it didn’t match up to the high level of acquisitions that were made more recently,” said Stuart W. Pyhrr, the curator in charge of the Met’s arms and armor department. The armor is assembled from pieces made around the same time in the 16th century but that came from different sources. The helmet and shield are modern replacements for missing originals. The skillfully forged helmet was made in Paris in 1891 by Daniel Tachaux, an armorer who, in 1909, was hired by Bashford Dean, the Met’s first curator of arms and armor to set up an armor conservation workshop at the museum, which is still active.

Mr. Pyhrr said that when he and his curators were thinking of a way to celebrate the department’s centennial exhibition, opening on Oct. 2, someone jokingly remarked: “Everyone grew up with that jousting figure, so wouldn’t it be great to put it in the Great Hall?”

What started as a flippant suggestion is becoming a reality. The armor is a special type worn in Germany and Austria for the “joust of peace,” a sporting contest that challenges aim and horsemanship. Two armored contestants on horseback, armed with blunt lances, try to knock their opponent off his horse or to break their lances against their opponent’s armor. The horse’s eyes are covered by a protective steel plate, so the rider has complete control.

To protect the riders the armor had to be especially thick, heavy and rigid, Mr. Pyhrr explained, and the helmet well padded to guard against whiplash. (Leg armor, however, was not necessary since blows below the belt were forbidden.)

The horse is dressed up in brightly colored brocade and velvet coverings. There is a matching velvet, straw-filled bumper across its chest to protect the horse and the rider’s legs in case of a collision. “It’s a contest that was fought outdoors in an open field,” Mr. Pyhrr said, with stands full of cheering spectators.

“There was pageantry, color and high drama,” he added. “It was the major spectator sport of the period.”