Armor and the Man

Photo by Mark Heithoff

Ronald Lauder at his home, standing between a knight and charger in German armor (1515-30) (left), and a crica 1610 Italian suit.

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Photographs of the elaborate dinner parties that Estée Lauder, the founder of the international cosmetics empire, gave at her imposing town house on New York’s Upper East Side provide glimpses of celebrities and socialites seated at tables elegantly laid with crystal glassware, fine porcelain and silver. Entertaining at this address is likely no less elegant now that it’s the home of Estée’s younger son, Ronald. However, visitors may be in for a shock. Crossing the black-and-white marble checkerboard floor of the entrance hall they are soon face-to-face with a life-size replica of a knight and charger both in full panoply. What could be more contrary, you might think, to the soft-skinned feminine beauty promised by Estée Lauder’s potions? But the finest armor is also beautiful. Indeed that is one reason why Ronald Lauder collects it.

Although he’s a distinguished businessman and former ambassador to Austria, not to mention the current chairman emeritus of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Lauder, 64, may be best known as a prodigious collector of modern art. Since his teens, he has been strongly attracted to the paintings, sculptures and furnishings of fin-de-siècle Vienna, a hotbed of modernism. It was his desire to share his enthusiasm with a wider public that led Lauder in 2001 to open the small but peerless Neue Galerie of German and Austrian Art just a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum. Among its treasures is Gustav Klimt’s famous 1907 portrait of the Viennese beauty Adele Bloch-Bauer, which Lauder bought in 2006 for a reported $135 million, a record price for a painting at the time.

Not so well known is that Lauder is also fascinated by medieval and Renaissance armor. In fact, he has amassed what is generally considered the best private collection of such military arms and armor in the world. It includes whole suits, like those worn by Lauder’s horse and rider, as well as individual pieces, from helmets to chamfrons, the protective headpiece worn by a knight’s mount. The chamfron on the steed that greets visitors to the house has a spike sticking straight out from between the eye coverings, a potentially lethal and certainly scary variation on a unicorn’s horn.

On a table in the parlor, two shirts of mail are on display. One of them, made from two different sizes of links and resembling a chic little cape held by four silver clasps, belonged to a bishop. The other, with its open collar, short sleeves and lack of decoration, seems rough and ready for action. Flanking the table are two suits of armor; the one on the left is Italian, circa 1610, embellished with bold diagonals that prefigure Italian Futurism. Behind the table hangs a mellow 12-by-13-foot early 15th-century French tapestry of woodcutters at work. Nearby, medieval painted statues stand on pedestals. Together, all these pieces create a harmonious and richly evocative atmosphere.

Armor is displayed at some of Lauder’s other homes, too, while an undisclosed number of his pieces are on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a room in the arms and armor galleries has been named for him. He has also given or contributed to the purchase of pieces in the museum’s permanent collection. Among these is a winning blue and gilded embossed escutcheon, made in Germany between 1525 and 1555. It is shaped like a rather imperious woman, her head held high, a gold necklace around her neck, and in front of her chest an intricately gilded shield. Again, we see art centuries in advance of its supposed introduction: This shield in the form of a person holding a shield anticipates postmodernism by half a millennium. Another extraordinary Met acquisition made possible by a Lauder donation is a highly decorated steel morion, a type of helmet that swoops upward both in front and in back. Made in Germany in 1566, the piece is intricately etched with many lively scenes, among them a horse and rider engaged in armed combat. The elegance of the work and the inventiveness of its imagery indicate that a very fine artist was involved in its creation.