“When you stand in front of a piece of armor, you can get a feel for what [a person’s] presence was like,” says Chassica Kirchhoff, Assistant Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the DIA. “It’s unlike any other medium in that way…you’re really standing in front of the silhouette of a person who existed 400 years ago.”
On view at the DIA through April 26, 2026, Armor as Fashion: Guests of Honor offers viewers the first opportunity in more than two centuries to see the full-length Portrait of Jean de Croÿ, 2nd Count of Solre (1626) reunited with several elements of the exceptionally wrought armor depicted within it.
But as Kirchhoff notes, this is likely the public’s first opportunity ever to see the painting and armor together. The portrait, by Spanish painter Juan van der Hamen y Léon (1596-1631), is on loan from a private collection, where it has been housed for roughly two decades. Up to that point, it was in the possession of the de Croÿ family itself, where it would not have been accessible.
The armor, meanwhile, remained in the de Croÿ family’s possession until the early 18th century; it was later sold again, to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes in France, from which it is on loan.
“These don’t look like steel, but they are,” says Kirchhoff, indicating the armor, which flank the portrait of Jean de Croÿ: a helmet and throat defense on one side and, on the other, a matching shaffron, which a horse would have worn over its head.
“They’re not bright, shiny steel like we would expect armor to be. Instead, it blurs the boundary between armor and embroidery, or costume,” she adds. “It’s very much haute couture of the period.”
The armor, which was forged in Brussels in about 1624 by an armorer known only by his monogram, MP, bears an exquisitely complex pattern on its surface, so intricate that Kirchhoff describes it as “botanical.” “It almost looks woven,” she says.
Vines and leaves can be made out, fleurs-de-lis and star-shaped rivets, all of them hand-applied with a file, according to Kirchhoff. As a whole, the object was dipped in a chemical bath to produce a rich russet color. “That’s not corrosion,” says Kirchhoff, “— that’s intentional, to make a contrasting ground for the gold.”
The hammered gold leaf was laid half a millimeter thick over a cross-hatched pattern, which gave the gold something to grip to. The result, Kirchhoff says, is utterly unlike that produced by mercury gilding (“which is gold dust suspended in mercury and then heated”), the technique more commonly used at the time.
If the surface of the finished product is delicate — fragile, even — “the armor itself is really resilient,” Kirchhoff says. From the 1400s onwards, “this tension between fragility and strength is something that…a lot of armorers play with,” she adds. Craftsmen sometimes adopted a teasing playfulness in their work, finding ways for armor to resemble textiles, or stained-glass tracery, or other forms in which “the materiality [could] be transformed.”
In the portrait of Jean de Croÿ, van der Hamen has carried this playfulness forward: the intricacy of MP’s armor is depicted not only in van der Hamen’s painted armor; it is also echoed in the patterning of his trunk hose, and even his sleeves.
“I love the way that the artist — and probably de Croÿ, when he got dressed that day — blurs the boundaries between the steel and the embroidery,” Kirchhoff says.
Jean de Croÿ had recently become commander of the Royal Guard, which was responsible for protecting the King of Spain (then Philip the Fourth) and had commissioned a set of armor — this set of armor — to wear in that capacity. (Van der Hamen was himself a member of the Royal Guard, “so these guys knew each other really well,” Kirchhoff says.)
“This is armor that’s intended as a marker of status,” says Kirchhoff, armor intended to broadcast the “idea of a battle-ready commander” — but whether it was actually worn in combat isn’t clear, and seems, given the expense and labor involved, unlikely.
“How is it that people in the 1620s visualize power, or visualize a commanding presence, or visualize wealth?” Kirchhoff asks.
When we talk about armor and portraiture, she adds, what we’re really talking about is “a visual language of power.”
“On a more relatable and light-hearted note,” Kirchhoff says, “we all conceptualize [the way] we dress as the way that we express ourselves and tell people about our identities. That’s what armor is. I keep describing it as high fashion, but it really was the pinnacle of wearable art for its time…It’s this ability to create a persistent echo of how you presented yourself…It’s about self-presentation, self-fashioning — [and] about languages of power.”
Learn more about The Armor as Fashion: Guests of Honor at dia.org. Plus, find even more community news at hourdetroit.com.
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