Military portraits in European art: armour, uniforms, batons and medals

Kings, princes and generals were often painted as soldiers. A ruler in shining armour, a colonel in a red coat on a smoky battlefield, a duke with a chest full of stars: each of these pictures says "this person commands". This page explains how military portraits were composed in Europe from the 1500s to the 1800s, and how to read their signs: armour, the baton of command, the uniform, and the medals and orders pinned to the coat. For the royal regalia that sit beside them, see symbols of royal power, and for the wider story, the guide to European royal portraits.

Armour as a sign of rank

The Wallace Collection in London holds a late 15th century South German armour for both a man and his horse. The museum says only three full equestrian armours made before the 16th century survive in the world, and that its own is the only one kept complete as first made. It has served for 150 years as a standard image of the medieval European knight.

Armour could also appear as a statement of character. The National Gallery in London holds Giovanni Battista Moroni's A Knight with his Jousting Helmet, painted in the 1550s. The sitter, thought to be Count Faustino Avogadro of Brescia, wears a padded leather jacket called an arming doublet, with mail laced to it to cover the gaps in the plate. His plumed helmet and his rapier, a sword inlaid with gold and silver, were made for tournaments. Pieces of his armour lie scattered on the floor, which the gallery says is unusual and has never been explained. It suggests the ruined setting may point to the lasting virtues of the sitter.

Kings kept wearing armour in their portraits. The National Gallery says Anthony van Dyck shows Charles I in fine armour on horseback, his long hair and pearl earring about to be hidden by the helmet his servant is passing him: glamorous, but also ready for battle. Rubens painted the Earl of Arundel twice as a man of action, in armour and looking straight at the viewer. In the 1700s armour could be a studio prop. The gallery says the same suit appears in three portraits by the French painter Jean-Marc Nattier, including its own Portrait of a Man in Armour, whose sitter wears the medal of a knight of the military Order of Saint Louis.

What a medieval knight actually wore into battle is explained in what a medieval knight wore. The Purrspectives article on military dog portraits tells the stories of real dogs who served in war.

The baton of command

A baton is a short, decorated rod carried by a commander. The National Gallery says the baton in Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I signals the king's senior military rank. In Britain, the highest rank is field marshal. The National Army Museum says the Duke of Wellington earned a field marshal's baton for destroying the French army at Vittoria in 1813, and that a field marshal's rank badge shows two crossed batons in a wreath beneath a crown. A general's badge shows a crossed baton and sabre beneath a star and crown.

Where to look for rank on a uniform is also set by custom. The National Army Museum explains that every soldier's rank is shown by a title and a set of badges. Officers usually wear their badges on the shoulders or the chest, and other soldiers wear theirs on the sleeves. So in a portrait, the shoulders of the coat are one of the first places to check. The gold fringed pads on the shoulders of the Samoyed's coat on the cover of this page sit where an officer's rank would be shown.

Red coats and the painted battlefield

In the 1700s, British officers were painted in uniform against scenes of battle. The National Gallery's Captain Robert Orme by Joshua Reynolds shows an officer of the Coldstream Guards in his campaign uniform: a scarlet coat with blue lapels and cuffs, a grey waistcoat trimmed with gold lace, buff breeches and black gaiters. Orme was aide-de-camp, a personal assistant officer, to General Edward Braddock, whose force was defeated in North America on 9 July 1755. Reynolds shows Orme about to leap onto his horse with a dispatch, against a break in the storm clouds and smoke of battle. The gallery says Reynolds took the poses of the man and horse from a fresco he had drawn in Florence in 1752.

This portrait was an advertisement. The National Gallery says Reynolds painted it on speculation, without a commission, and kept heroic full-length portraits on display in his studio so that sitters might order something grander than a head-and-shoulders likeness. Orme never owned it.

Reynolds's Colonel Tarleton, shown at the Royal Academy in 1782, is a second example. The gallery says Banastre Tarleton, commander of the British Legion cavalry in the American War of Independence, is shown dismounted on a battlefield, one leg on a cannon, fixing his sword to his belt while troopers hold horses behind. His pose combines a Rembrandt drawing, a detail from a Tintoretto painting in Venice and an ancient sculpture of the god Hermes. Tarleton had nine sittings.

Some portraits included an object that explained the event. In Reynolds's Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar, the general holds a giant key, the "key of Gibraltar", which he refused to give up during a siege by Spain and France that ended on 13 September 1782. Red-hot shot from the cannon on the rock sets the enemy ships alight behind him. The National Gallery says the portrait was commissioned by John Boydell, an alderman of the City of London, for a gallery of paintings of "great and glorious actions" in the Guildhall, and that it was engraved soon after to profit from Heathfield's fame.

How the poses in these pictures developed is explained on the page about royal portrait poses.

Medals, stars and sashes

By 1800 a general's medals recorded his career. The badge of an order of knighthood was worn on a sash or as a star on the coat. In Heathfield's portrait, the National Gallery says, the star on his breast is the Order of the Bath, which he received for defending Gibraltar.

Francisco de Goya's Duke of Wellington in the National Gallery shows how honours were added over time. Wellington sat for Goya in Madrid in 1812, after entering the city in August. As he received new honours, Goya changed the portrait. The gallery lists the badges of the Order of the Bath, the Portuguese Tower and Sword and the Spanish San Fernando on his chest, the blue and pink sashes across his shoulder, and the Golden Fleece at his neck. The Military Gold Cross was only introduced in October 1813, well after the sitting, and it shows three clasps for the battles he had fought by the summer of 1812. The gallery says the face is gaunt and exhausted, in contrast with the bright crimson uniform.

The ribbons themselves have meanings. The National Army Museum says medal ribbon colours come from heraldry: purple for royalty, blue for personal strength, black for loyalty, green for love, and red for military strength and courage. It adds that red and blue appear often in British ribbons for gallantry, and that each service has its colour: red for the British Army, dark blue for the Royal Navy and pale blue for the Royal Air Force. It says the first medal known to have been worn from a neck ribbon was the Cumberland Society Medal, created in 1746 for officers who fought at Culloden, with a crimson and green ribbon approved by King George II.

Emperors wore the orders they founded. The National Gallery says Horace Vernet's portrait of Napoleon, one of three he painted in 1815 and 1816 for the Scottish collector Lord Kinnaird, shows the emperor with the cross and star of the Légion d'honneur and the cross of the Order of the Iron Crown, both orders that Napoleon had founded. The gallery says Vernet's image emphasises the man over imperial glory.

From paint to photograph

The conventions of the painted military portrait passed into photography. The National Army Museum says photography inherited many of them, presenting celebrated commanders in heroic or carefully staged poses. Its example is a photograph of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, from the early 1860s, in an elaborate uniform and a leaning stance long used to convey relaxed authority. The museum adds that early photographs also showed rank: an officer's elaborate uniform next to the plainer dress of an ordinary soldier. A portrait could also serve a later war. The museum says the image of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, already famous when a studio portrait of him was taken in 1901, was spread widely across the British Empire during the First World War, mainly to encourage men to join the army. The page on Victorian royal portraits covers the royal family's own photographs.

The Military General style

Purrealism's Military General style puts a dog or cat in this tradition. The Samoyed on the cover of this page, from the gallery, wears a dark blue uniform with gold braid, a row of medals and silver stars, beside a tall column. The gallery also shows the style on a Siamese cat. You can choose it in the portrait studio with one photo of your pet of up to 5 MB.