How Was Armor Made?

The subject depicted here is taken from antiquity. As recorded in the Aeneid, Venus, the Roman goddess of love, asks her husband Vulcan, the god of metalworking, to make armor for her son, Aeneas. This scene, however, celebrates metalworking as it was executed in the Renaissance. Every stage of the craft is depicted: laborers dig iron ore from bogs; smelters extract iron from the ore; water-powered triphammers beat slag out of the metal; hammermen flatten the iron into plates; and the master craftsman—Vulcan himself—shapes the metal into its final form before it goes to the water-powered polishing wheels. Strewn about are metal products that range from arms and armor to coins and kitchenware.

This video will guide you to look closely at the painting and to observe the different steps of metalworking needed to create armor. Can we learn how armor was made from a painting based on a Roman myth?