Lombard belt from Vicenza, Santa Corona Museum, Italy · Lombard belt from Vicenza, Santa Corona Museum, Italy ... This typology is also to be seen in Castelvecchio Museum in Verona

Article written by Angelo Faresin, distributed with License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Lombard belt from Vicenza, Santa Corona Museum, Italy

This belt is in my opinion one of the most interesting find of the Santa Corona collection. It is a damaged find, a plate part of a buckle used in a weapon belt (find on the left, in the picture).

The uniqueness of this find is the round decorative plate (I will call it from now on “coin”, because of its shape, but I want to underline that this was not coinage) inserted into the main plate, creating a special decorative effect.

It is an iron plate which presents two small bronze nails with milled crown, and at its center presents a bronze-colored coin, which facade reveals an animal figure, probably a stylized wolf that aims to a second curved figure, that can be interpreted as a snake, a spear or maybe a fish.

Because of the damaged aspect of the find, I compared it with other similar finds. Unfortunately the museum doesn’t give much information about the find itself to the visitor, but I suppose it is a Lombard kit item datable the half of the VII° Century. This form and quality of the brass damascening is typical of the late belts of last part of 650 AC.

The second belt in the collection (find on the right, in the first picture) is the find I took as inspiration base to complete the missing part of the plate. This typology is also to be seen in Castelvecchio Museum in Verona. Special features of this typology is the long expanded apex, the presence of decorative brass damascening in the plate, and the long tip situated at the end of the leather belt that usually presents also a brass damascening decoration.

I had to understand the measurements of the find with comparison between my original photos of the find, and the photos and pictures of the same typology of belt that I found in the 1989 catalogue of Castelvecchio Museum of Verona. My photos were not high quality, because I had to shoot them behind


the window of the collection, but I am confident that the measurements are almost exact because of the 1:1 scala pictures of the catalogue.

The exact picture of the reconstructive hypothesis was made in digital graphic by a designer and goldsmith specialized on historical jewels. Special attention has been given to the reconstruction of the decorative motif of the coin. In this passage I realized that the explanatory drawing presented in the exhibition differs markedly from the motif shown in the coin. Thanks to the digital enlargements of the photos we could replicate the visible motif in bas-relief on the coin millimeter by millimeter. Particularly emerged from these enlargements is the apparent bicaudality of the serpentiform element, which could be interpreted as a fish. The curvilinear gait of the element made me exclude the possibility of the spear, also a symbol of the Lombard royal culture, and that is often associated with the wolf in the depiction of Merovingian warriors, Alamanni (eg Gutenstein) or Anglo-Saxons.

Once I got the 1: 1 scale drawing of the find, I proceeded to recreate it with goldsmithing and metallurgy techniques thanks to the essential support of Martin Jung, an expert German craftsman, recognized at european level for his historical reproductions of the Merovingian period. The plaque of thefind was therefore made of iron, cut made with hand saw and then carefully filed. Polishing occurred with various types of lime and silicone rubber. The actual buckle (absent in the original find) has been embellished with a motif with damascened striped rows, practicing the linear cuts in the iron and inserting the punched brass wire along the decorative lines.


For the realization of the coin, the lost wax casting technique was chosen. I created the wax model, taking care to create various levels to guarantee the bas-relief effect. For the bronze casting I asked to a company specialized in goldsmith products.

The final iron plate was burnished, the coin mounted inside the vague in the plate iron, the nails for fixing in brass were plated in gold, and the buckle was fixed to a belt in leather sewn by hand.

It is interesting to note that in the original presence of the animal figure in the coin allows us to understand the object's decorative direction, the animal looks in the direction of the buckle.

One possible explanation is that the belt was worn by the individual with the buckle on the left (the opposite of what is often done today with a modern male belt to support the trousers). Another hypothesis could be that it was a left-handed individual, or (but we have no evidence) that this use was connected with wearing a "kaftan" type piece of clothing derived from the peoples of the steppes, with two overlapping flaps from left to right (like today's martial arts uniform).


In my reconstruction I made a practical adaptation, that is the coin "looks" to the right rather than to the left, as I am right handed and I wear the reconstruction weapons (spatha, scramasax) on the left side. In fact, I recall that this reproduction has been rebuilt to be used in historical reconstruction/living history , so the reconstructed equipment is put into use in order to better understand its use and the functional reasons underlying the choice of certain shapes .

I want to thank some people who have helped me, especially: Martin and Lavinia from Fulka Mogin, Germany without them my handcraft reconstruction would not have reached this high quality

Nicola, Giorgio and Yuri from Langobardia Maior, Italy for the friendly and accurate feedback during the writing of this article

To contact me: angelo dot faresin at gmail dot com

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Lombard belt from Vicenza, Santa Corona Museum, Italy · Lombard belt from Vicenza, Santa Corona Museum, Italy ... This typology is also to be seen in Castelvecchio Museum in Verona