The armet is the close-fitting enclosed helmet of the fifteenth century, built from a skull and two hinged cheek pieces that close under the chin.
The armet is a fully enclosing helmet built in three parts: a skull, and two cheek pieces hinged at the sides that swing forward and close under the chin. A pivoted visor completes it.
That construction is the whole point. Because it opens, an armet can be made to fit closely around the head and jaw — far more closely than a helmet that has to be pulled on over the skull — and the result is compact, well balanced, and light for the protection it gives.
It appears in Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century and spreads north, and with the sallet it is one of the two helmets that define the late medieval man-at-arms. The two solved the same problem in opposite ways.
The skull is raised from a single plate and shaped to the head, with the cheek pieces hinged near the temples. Closed, they meet at the chin and are secured with a hook, a pin or a strap.
The visor pivots on the same axis or slightly above it, and is usually removable so the same helmet could be worn open on the march and closed for the fight. Many have a small reinforcing plate over the brow.
A characteristic fitting is the rondel, a small disc on a short stem at the back of the neck. It is not decoration: it covers the strap or wing-nut securing the cheek pieces, which is the helmet's one obvious weak point from behind.
It gives complete coverage of the head and face with no gap between helmet and body armour, and because it turns with the head the wearer can look where he is going rather than turning his shoulders.
Its weight, generally two and a half to three and a half kilograms, is carried on the head and the neck rather than the shoulders. That is heavier on the neck than a sallet but far better balanced than a great helm.
It is equipment for the fully armoured — men fighting mounted with the lance, or on foot with poleaxe and dagger in the manner the fifteenth-century fight books describe, where the whole contest is a search for a gap and the armet leaves very few.
Its strengths are close fit, complete coverage and balance. Nothing else in the period gives that much protection in that little bulk, and the close fit means the helmet moves with the wearer instead of shifting on him.
Its limitations are heat, hearing and vision. A closed armet is stifling, sound arrives muffled, and the wearer sees through a slit — which is why they were worn open whenever fighting was not imminent.
It also cannot be put on unaided. Cheek pieces have to be opened, the helmet settled, and the closure secured, which in practice means a servant — a real constraint that the sallet, simply dropped onto the head, did not share.
It emerges in northern Italy in the 1420s and 1430s, developing out of the bascinet as armourers sought a helmet that could fit closely and still be got on and off.
Through the middle of the century it spreads to Burgundy, France and the Holy Roman Empire, and by about 1450 it is standard equipment for the Italian man-at-arms while German practice continues to prefer the sallet and bevor.
It continues past the medieval period into the sixteenth century, where it merges with parallel developments into the close helmet — a helmet with a visor and bevor pivoting on a common axis, which is a different construction despite the similar appearance.
Italian armets are the classic form: rounded, smooth, closely fitted, and made in the Milanese workshops that supplied much of Europe.
Northern examples tend to be somewhat larger and more angular, and where German armourers adopted the type at all they often combined it with elements of their own sallet-and-bevor tradition.
The rondel at the back of the neck is more common on Italian work than northern, and its presence is a reasonable if not decisive indicator of where a given helmet was made.