Heldenplatz
Tel. 01- 5252 4484
Open: 10am- 6pm Wed- Mon
Subway: Volkstheater, Herrengasse
Hofjadg and Rustkammer hold an interesting collection of weapons from Hofburg royal palace complex. Some of items were made in Austria while other splendid masterpieces were made all over Europe. Other items came from Syria and Ottoman Empire. The museum of weapons also houses a collection of personal weapons of monarchs from the Habsburg dynasty.
The Vienna Collection is one of the best of its
kind in the world. It is also the best documented court armory in
the western world, since the objects were created in connection with
highly political events or came into the collection: on the occasion
of campaigns, Imperial Diets, tributes, coronations, engagements ,
Weddings or baptisms. No other ruling family was connected to so
many European countries through marriage as the Habsburgs.
Therefore, almost all Western European princes from the 15th to the
early 20th century are represented with armor and ceremonial
weapons.
The harnesses are custom-made by the most famous
armourers: the riding harness by Tommaso Missaglia, the pumpkin by
Lorenz Helmschmid for Emperor Maximilian I, the boy's pleated skirt
harness by Konrad Seusenhofer for the later Emperor Karl V. and the
half-harness alla romana by Filippo Negroli and many more. The
designs by famous artists such as Dürer or Holbein were often used
for the often magnificent etching.
The history of the collection
The Habsburgs
inherited objects from a wide variety of countries: from the old
crown and neighboring countries, from Bohemia and Hungary, Galicia
and other Balkan regions, as well as from today's BENELUX countries,
i.e. the old Netherlands, from provinces of today's France such as
Burgundy, Alsace , Lorraine, not least from Spain and large parts of
Italy. Diplomatic relations and armed conflicts enriched the
collection with objects from the Middle East, be it the enemy Turks
or the Persians and Egyptians who were allied with the Habsburgs at
times.
The imperial claim alone guaranteed the highest
artistic quality. Everything that surrounded the ruler and his
vassals, from the palace in which he lived to his furnishings, was
of the finest delicacy, and so what he wore on his own body had to
be particularly precious: from his armor as splendid costume over
sword or epee up to the mace. The same was true for the armor of his
horse. So every single object is a work of art.
When almost
all of the armories of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg
in Vienna were united in the 19th century, a collection was created
that today is one of the best of its kind in the world. In its
current arrangement, there are essentially three large holdings
that, through the combination, gave this collection its special
character.
The basis was the imperial body armory, in which,
since 1436, the equipment, mainly armor and ceremonial weapons of
the ruling family and its followers, was kept. In early baroque, the
armor also completely lost its meaning as a symbol of the class,
because in the "modern" state it was no longer necessary to show
knightly virtues or physical performance with armor. As a result,
the objects of the imperial body armory were presented as museum
objects and finally in a baroque hall of fame of Austrian-Habsburg
history together with military weapons.
From the Baroque
onwards, all artistic skills were used for the decorative and
technical design of hunting and sporting weapons as well as for
fashionable accessories such as the court epee. These objects belong
to the second large collection, the "Hofgewehr- or Hofjagdkammer",
which was created under Emperor Ferdinand II (1578 / 1619–1637);
Every epoch up to the end of the monarchy in 1918 is represented
with the highest quality works.
We owe the third - and
perhaps most important in terms of cultural history - to Archduke
Ferdinand von Tirol's (1529–1595) unique “hero armory chamber”,
which he created from 1577 in Ambras Castle near Innsbruck. This
collection is the work of a highly educated, art-loving, highly
liberal prince, who was provided with great funds and who used his
social relationships with all the major courts in Europe to realize
his "Atrium Heroicum", the "honest society". (The word "honest" was
understood at that time in the sense of "honorable".) According to a
concept that was surprisingly modern even for today's terms, he
collected the armor and weapons of all famous personalities from the
prince to the general of his time and the previous century. 125 viri
illustri included his collection, the inventory of which he had
commissioned. This first printed, illustrated museum catalog only
appeared after his death (1601 in Latin, 1603 in German). Each
“hero” is portrayed in full armor in copperplate engraving and
described with his curriculum vitae. This collection was available
to the public for a fee as early as the 17th century.
The
Ambras Collection came to Vienna as imperial private property in the
course of the Napoleonic occupations in 1806 and was combined with
the collections already mentioned. In 1889 the weapon collection was
the first collection of the newly built k. k. Kunsthistorisches
Hofmuseum opened. After the dissolution of the monarchy at the end
of the First World War in 1918, the art history collections of the
Most High Imperial House became the property of the Republic of
Austria.