The ever present image of the knight in popular imagination is the mounted warrior in shining armor. If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you may know that I'm fond of taking popular misconceptions of the middle ages and dashing them to the ground, however you can rest assured that this particular trope isn't inaccurate. Not entirely.
But what color was armor? We certainly have innumerable artifacts
and period depictions of fighting men wearing brilliant polished steel,
(France, 1350-1355, Works of Guillaume de Machaut)
more than enough to say for certain that people in the middle ages did wear polished steel on the field of battle, however this wasn't the only color represented.
Delving into the manuscripts and looking at extant pieces, we see a wealth of colors available, from bluing
(Augsburg, before 1560, KHM)
In manuscripts, russeting
(France, 1350, Roman de la Rose)
(Vienna, 1448, Bibelparaphrase)
seem to be particularly prevalent.
However, one must be cautious when dealing with manuscripts. In particular, there was a convention in illuminated manuscripts of using silver leaf to make metallic weapons pop and shine brightly. Given time however, this silver will tarnish, and turn black, giving the appearance of black armor to what was originally meant to be bright and shiny, as illustrated below.
(France, 1350-1360, Roman de la Rose)
It is often easy to distinguish if this is the case if the weapons in the scene also appear black, or if the black armor appears smudged and blurry, both as in the above image.
Gilding is another particularly popular style of armor decoration, most often used as a form of accent to white or black armor in the middle ages.
(Hagenau, 1443-1446, Parzival)
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