CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Since its inauguration in 2014, the Guests of Honor exhibition series has brought single or small groups of extraordinary artworks from collections across the globe to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Part of the museum’s repertoire of exhibition formats, Guests of Honor offers unique opportunities for focused interventions that spark visitors’ interest. They invite close looking and deeper engagement that not only highlights exceptional loans but expands the narratives of art embodied in the museum’s distinguished permanent collection. The eighth installment of the series, Guests of Honor: Armor as Fashion (25 April 2025–25 April 2027), reunites the portrait and armor of Jean de Croÿ (1588–1638), a Flemish knight, diplomat, commander, and courtier, for the first time in over two centuries (fig. 1). This exciting reunion was facilitated by partnerships with the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, and the distinguished Spanish private Colección Cruz-Mayor.

Jean de Croÿ, 2^nd Count of Solre and Baron of Molembaix and Beaufort, was born in Solre-le-Château, near the border of present-day France and Belgium. His family ranked among the most prominent nobility in Europe, having risen to chivalric renown within the Burgundian Court. His ancestors were founding knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, in 1614, Jean was inducted into this illustrious brotherhood. In addition to his service as a knight and commander, Croÿ distinguished himself as a political advisor to the Habsburg regents of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert of Austria (1559–1621) and his wife, the Spanish Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566–1633), undertaking diplomatic missions to Poland, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1624, Croÿ moved to Madrid when King Philip IV of Spain (1605–65) appointed him Captain of the Guardia de los Archeros, or Royal Guard of Archers, the personal bodyguard of the Spanish Royal Family. The Guardia consisted entirely of immigrants from Spain’s Flemish territories, or those of Flemish descent. Thus, its ranks also included the Brussels-born courtier Jehan van der Hamen (d. 1612), and—later—his Spanish-born son, the painter Juan van der Hamen y Léon (1596–1631).

Signed by van der Hamen y Léon in 1626, Croÿ’s full-length portrait (fig. 2), depicts its subject (the artist’s own commander) at nearly life size, standing confidently in a darkened space. He casually rests his left hand on the hilt of his rapier and gazes outward toward the viewer as a spotted hound dozes at his feet. A spectacular, gilt half-armor encases the count while the matching helmet, crowned with crimson ostrich plumes, rests on the velvet-covered table to his left. Rather than the painter’s invention, this armor is a meticulous portrayal of the real steel defenses forged by Brussels armorers for the count (figs. 3 and 4). This innovative and sumptuous armor protected Croÿ and declared his status and taste as well as his Flemish origins.

Created in a Brussels workshop within the circle of an armorer known by his monogram, MP, the armor represents the apex of luxury production in the early seventeenth century. Talented armorers skillfully formed the stout steel surfaces, punctuated by star-shaped hardware, before immersion in a chemical bath imparted a rich, matte russet surface to the metal. Finally, a gilder applied gold leaf atop patterns hatched with a file, creating dense fields of shimmering golden foliage whose painterly fluidity seems to transform the metal defenses into finely embroidered textiles, further reinforcing armor’s status as the haute couture of medieval and early modern European menswear. An article published in the Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts by Pierre Terjanian, former Curator in Charge of Arms and Armor at The Metropolitan Museum and now Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, expands upon the surviving corpus of exceptional armors created by the Master MP and his Brussels circle. Indeed, Terjanian underscores how stylistic details like the radiant star-shaped washer at the apex of the helmet’s crown (a Flemish and French feature that deliberately echoed the decoration of Burgundian helmets worn 150 years earlier) connect Croÿ’s armor to defenses forged by the Master MP at the behest of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and sent as gifts to the young King Philip IV of Spain. For Croÿ, sporting such exceptional armor declared his role within the inner circle of Philip’s court as well as his connection to his Flemish homeland and its Habsburg Regents.¹

With the exception of the detachable tassets (upper thigh defenses) Croÿ’s armor survives in its entirety, and—since 1827—has resided in the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes. The distinctive burgonet (a popular form of open-faced helmet, often with hinged cheek plates) and gorget (throat defense) (see fig. 3) are in excellent condition, and feature in the installation. In addition to the helmet and gorget that Croÿ himself wore, the exhibition also includes a matching shaffron (see fig. 4) meant to defend and adorn the head of his horse. Well into the 1600s, sumptuous armors such as Croÿ’s usually came with a matching shaffron. These equine accessories ensured that a noble rider and his steed presented a unified vision of knightly identity. In each element of Croÿ’s armor, the remarkable gilt surface of the steel plays with the boundaries between metal and textile, evoking the silk brocades and metallic embroideries beloved at the courts of early modern Europe. The shaffron’s tassel-like finial, expertly wrought with spiraling flutes, adds to the association with textiles, while the fluted escutcheon at the center of the horse’s brow recalls the folds of starched ruffs or satin ribbons.  Customized mounts support the armor elements, highlighting their charismatic presence for visitors. Following the end of the exhibition in April 2027, the mounts will return to Valenciennes along with the armor to facilitate potential future display when the Musée des Beaux-Arts reopens to visitors after an extensive, multiyear renovation.

The installation of the portrait and the armor it depicts in Detroit offers a unique opportunity for North American museumgoers to encounter these interrelated examples of the artistic splendor that animated the cosmopolitan Habsburg courts in the early modern Low Countries and Spain. As with other past and current iterations of the Guests of Honor series, installing the works within the museum’s permanent collection galleries allows them to participate in shaping visitors’ experiences of historical works of art and the dynamic contexts and human stories they embody.

The exhibition appears prominently within the DIA’s Cracchiolo Gallery of Baroque Art (fig. 5), alongside seventeenth-century treasures from the museum’s collection. These include many exceptional works of Spanish art acquired during the last fifteen years. A portrait of a noblewoman by Rodrigo di Villandrando (1588–1622) (fig. 6) hangs just to the left of the installation. Its juxtaposition with Van der Hamen’s representation of Jean de Croÿ invites comparison between the commander encased in armor, whose gilt surfaces resemble refined embroidery, with the lady clothed in a sumptuous gown and starched lace ruff, whose crisp silhouette and stiff construction evoke armor’s sculpted forms. Nearby, a Virgin and Child by Luis Salvador Carmona (1708–1767) (fig. 7) stands in the center of the gallery. Carmona completed this work around 1750 for the chapel of the Hermandad de Jesús y Maria, the brotherhood of skilled Flemish tapestry weavers employed by the Real Fábrica de Tapices. The Virgin’s clothing, enlivened by vibrant polychromy and golden estofado, mimics fashionable textiles, perhaps alluding to the weavers’ trade. In her arms, the infant Jesus grasps a cross upon which he meditates, an iconographic detail popular in the patrons’ Flemish homeland. Thus, the loans in Guests of Honor: Armor as Fashion and the nearby Spanish works from the DIA collection tell stories of courtly self-fashioning and cosmopolitan connections between Spain and the Low Countries, drawing attention to Flanders as a leading center for the production of luxury goods such as armor, textiles, and tapestries.

The Guests of Honor series offers flexible opportunities to borrow works that celebrate the DIA’s diverse communities, resonate with touchstone works from the permanent collection, or combine with other singular loans to share works and stories not often encountered by the public. Previous projects have included collaborations with the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and several other distinguished private and public collections. At the time of writing, the DIA is concurrently hosting three Guests of Honor installations, an unprecedented array of offerings within this exhibition framework. These include not only Armor as Fashion but also Art of Faith from The Jewish Museum, New York (5 December 2025–21January 2028) and Frederich Church’s Cotopaxi (27 March 2026–25 October 2026), featuring loans by the American painter from the Cooper Hewitt Museum and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, both in New York, presented within the permanent galleries. Art of Faith from The Jewish Museum, co-organized by the DIA’s Departments of European Art and Asian and Islamic Art, integrates remarkable works of Jewish ceremonial art within the broader geographical and cultural contexts inhabited by communities from the Jewish diaspora. This multiyear project, which recently welcomed a new rotation of objects, represents a new direction for the Guests of Honor series, demonstrating the dynamic potential of this type of focused exhibition.

While less demanding, expensive, and logistically complex than major exhibitions, the focused loans that arrive in Detroit as Guests of Honor activate the museum’s galleries and collection in exciting and often-unexpected ways. Presenting single works or—as in Armor as Fashion and other Guests of Honor currently on view—small, interrelated groups of objects prompts viewers to look closer and spend more time with each remarkable work. The sparkling surfaces and ingenious design of the elements of Brussels armor in Armor as Fashion, hidden from public display since 1973, and the privately held portrait of Croÿ with which they are paired offer profound rewards for this mode of slower, more focused engagement and an opportunity to appreciate the impact of Flemish armor on foreign courts.

Chassica Kirchhoff is Associate Curator of European Sculpture & Decorative Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit. She has been a member of CODART since 2024.

¹ Pierre Terjanian, “The Portrait and Armor of Jean de Croÿ, Count of Solre,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 99, no. 1 (2025), 34-43.