A drawing (fig. 100) on folio 29r of the Thun album depicts a figure clad in resplendent late fifteenth-century armor and riding a horse that is also fully encased in overlapping steel plates that extend from its head to its hooves. The specificity of the rider's armor and distinct facial physiognomy coupled with the comparative sources that this chapter will explore identify him as a young Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy and future Holy Roman Emperor. This image was drawn by Artist A during the 1540s, but it retrospectively imagines Maximilian's appearance and that of his armored steed as they processed though the cities of Luxembourg and Namur in September 1480. The drawing synthesizes and expands earlier images attributed to the Burgundian artist, Pierre Coustain (active 1448–87), and copied in oil on canvas by a painter in the service of the Habsburg imperial court. One of these canvases depicts the imperial Master of Arms, Albrecht May, riding Maximilian's armored horse through Namur (fig. 101) and the other visualizes Maximilian riding through Luxembourg (fig. 102). Charles Buttin, Ortwin Gamber, and Fedja Anzelewsky firmly established the relationship between the drawing on Thun album folio 29r and the innovative horse armors produced by Lorenz Helmschmid around 1480. This chapter exposes the role of these and other spectacular armors in constructing Maximilian's public persona as the new duke, and in situating him within the visual lineage of the Burgundian court.

The striking drawing in the Thun album exists within a pictorial continuum that encompasses images made over nearly a century, from the 1480s through the 1570s. Analysis of the drawing's antecedents, contexts of creation, codicology within the album, and copies that it generated places the image within a visual tradition that mythologized Maximilian's exploits and retrospectively celebrated his idealized knightly identity. By considering the meanings resident in spectacular armors for man and horse and tracing their portrayals across miles and decades, this chapter shows how real events in the ruler's lifetime were transformed through retrospective art and literature into a chivalric mythos that animated early modern cultures of remembrance. The paintings and the drawing, as well as the remarkable armors they portray, each represent historical moments that witnessed and promoted Maximilian's self-construction in the image of virtuous, knightly masculinity.