Background
Lorenz was the son of the armorer Jörg Helmschmied, who was active in Augsburg from 1439.
Lorenz was the son of the armorer Jörg Helmschmied, who was active in Augsburg from 1439.
He was one of the primary armorers to the Habsburg court of the Holy Roman Emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I, and created some of the most technically innovative and artistically complex armors of the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. Lorenz is documented as an apprentice armorer from 1469, and as a master in his own right from 1477. In that year, the Augsburg city tax records first alluded to his creation of expensive armors for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. In 1491, Lorenz was officially invested with the title and privileges of court armorer, which he held for the rest of his life alongside the Innsbruck armorer, Conrad Seusenhofer.
Many of the exceptional armors created by the Helmschmied workshop during Lorenz"s lifetime, which include protections for both man and horse as well as specialized types of plate for tournament and field combat, remained in Habsburg imperial armories and can be seen today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Royal Armoury of Madrid.
Lorenz"s son, Kolman Helmschmied, worked alongside him from 1492, and took control of the Helmschmied workshop after his father"s death in 1515. Lorenz"s grandson, Desiderius Kolman Helmschmied was also an important armorer to aristocratic patrons throughout Europe into the late-sixteenth century.
