the.com/barbute
medieval Italy's answer to the question: what if your helmet looked like a screaming ghost?
means A medieval open-faced Italian helmet, often with a T- or Y-shaped face opening, that covered the head and cheeks while leaving the eyes and mouth visible.
from From the Italian 'barbuta,' meaning roughly 'bearded' — descending from Latin 'barba,' a beard — because the helmet's deep sides framed the wearer's face the way a beard frames a chin. It surfaced in 15th-century Italy, and its tall, narrow eye-slit owes an obvious debt to the ancient Greek Corinthian helmet, which it strikingly resembles. The Latin 'barba' is also the root behind 'barber' and 'barbarian' (the latter from a Greek mockery of foreign speech, not from beards — though the coincidence is too neat to resist).
- origin
- Italian, 15th century, born in city-state arms races
- greek echo
- shaped after ancient Corinthian helmets, reborn
- the face
- often a T or Y slit for eyes and breath
- meaning
- name derives from beard, the chin it guarded
- open style
- some left the whole face exposed for vision
henry viii's barbute — royal armouries, leeds; made c. 1520 for english king, one-piece italian helmet design
filippo brunelleschi's armor — florence, 1430s; renaissance architect designed his own barbute helmet, documented in guild records