Jean Drouart, French (d. 1715)
Armor of Infante Luis, Prince of Asturias, 1712
Paris, France
Steel, gold, gilt brass, textile, metallic yarn, paper; H. 28 in. (71.7 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Armand Hammer, Occidental Petroleum Corporation Gift, 1989 (1989.3)
Curator Comment
Possibly the last royal parade armor made in Europe, this armor is believed to have been presented to the five-year-old Infante Luis (1707–1724), prince of Asturias, by his great-grandfather Louis XIV of France (r. 1643–1715). Luis was the first Spanish-born Bourbon heir to the throne of Spain and ruled briefly as Luis I in 1724.
Remarkable for its state of preservation, the armor retains its lustrous blue and gold surfaces and nearly all its original red-silk lining. The gilt rivet heads are of heraldic design—the lion of León, the castle of Castile, and the fleur-de-lis of France—representing the dynastic claims to which Luis was heir.
The armor is signed and dated on the backplate "Drouar Ordinaire du Roi aux Heaume à Paris 1712" ("Drouar, armorer-in-ordinary to the king, at the sign of the helm, in Paris, 1712"). The signature presumably refers to Jean Drouart (d. 1715), the royal armorer, who must have been one of the last of his profession active in France by that date.
Stuart W. Pyhrr, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Curator in Charge, Department of Arms and Armor