Arts: A Knight’s Tale: Ronald Lauder’s Arms and Armor

A current lover of swashbuckling material is the businessman, collector, and philanthropist Ronald Lauder. Lauder, whose vast and diverse personal art collection is considered one of the world’s greatest, recounted in an interview with Artnet News, that he had been fascinated by The Met’s Arms and Armor department since he was a teenager.
“I would spend hours at the Met, imagining the stories of knights, kings, and princes. Later, I realized that arms and armor had a distinct beauty all its own, which represents the best sculpture of the 15th and 16th centuries.”
Lauder has since built his own outstanding arms and armor collection and has promised 91 of its objects to The Met. Some of these are included in the current blockbuster exhibit, “The Ronald S. Lauder Collection,” at the Neue Galerie New York, (closing on March 20, 2023).
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the museum he founded (located in a former Vanderbilt mansion on the Upper East Side), Lauder has put 500 works from his collection on display. The exhibit includes objects as varied as masterworks of Greek and Roman sculpture, Italian 13th- and 14th- century gold-ground paintings, objects for a Kunstkammer (cabinet of curiosities), modern Austrian and German artworks, and memorabilia from his favorite film, “Casablanca.”
Lauder is famous for his collecting manifesto that there are three categories of art: from impressive to awe-inspiring. He only collects from the latter. The exhibit is indeed full of superlatives and its knockout tableau is the curated display of arms and armor in a wood-paneled room on the museum’s second floor. Historic shields are hung like paintings on the walls, all manner of weapons and helmets gleam in visually dynamic groupings, and sculptural full suits of armor stand at attention.
Opportunities to see physical examples of armor alongside artwork that feature these objects can greatly enhance subsequent viewing experiences. A striking highlight of the “The Last Knight” exhibition was a painting that is part of The Met’s permanent collection called “Saint Maurice” by the German Renaissance Old Master painter Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop. Saint Maurice, a commander of a Roman legion, was from North Africa and martyred in A.D. 280 or A.D. 300. In the 13th century in Germany, he began to be depicted in artwork as black.
In the Cranach painting, the early Christian saint is depicted anachronistically wearing early 16th-century field armor. The Met notes that the armor’s “shading and articulation of forms are sensitively handled” by the artist. The armor in the artwork is, in fact, thought to be based on the one worn by Emperor Maximilian I’s grandson, Charles V, when he was coronated in 1520. The sword that Saint Maurice holds may represent a ceremonial sword presented by the pope to Maximilian. This painting is a thrilling example of how arms and armor can play a strategic role in communicating an artwork’s symbolism.
This idea of ideal gallantry continues to this day with collectors like Lauder displaying and donating historic works of art. As Lauder said in an interview, “Supporting museums and cultural institutions has been a key focus of mine. I consider myself a temporary guardian of the works in my collection, which belong ultimately to the public.”