Igor Mitoraj — Cuirasse II
The Cuirasse II (Breastplate II) is one of Mitoraj's armoured torso bronzes — a headless and limbless body wrapped in diagonal crossing straps that simultaneously protect and constrain the figure. The cuirasse motif connects Mitoraj's Roman warrior imagery with his deeper preoccupation with binding, concealment, and the body caught between armour and exposure. I am actively seeking examples of Cuirasse II and the related Cuirasse series.
Identifying the Cuirasse II
The Cuirasse II is a standing torso bronze. The defining feature is a pair of diagonal straps that cross at the chest — one running from the right shoulder to the left hip, the other from the left shoulder to the right hip, forming an X across the pectoral area. A collar or neck band sits at the upper edge of the torso. The body is truncated at the neck, hips, and upper arms — the typical Mitoraj fragmentation that reads the work as an excavated relic rather than a complete figure.
The signature MITORAJ appears incised on the base. The base itself is typically black marble — a rectangular slab that grounds the armoured torso with geometric clarity. The example in my collection stands on such a base, and examples with original bases are consistently preferable in the secondary market.
Cuirasse II — Technical Characteristics
Patina variants: warm gold-brown (the standard collector finish, showing the bronze surface at its most luminous) · dark brown-black · a few examples show a deeper oxidised patina
Signature: MITORAJ incised on the lower face of the base, or stamped at the lower edge of the torso itself
Edition marks: edition number stamped on the reverse or underside
Base: rectangular black marble slab, typically with bevelled edges — the proportion of the base to the torso is consistent across documented examples
The Cuirasse (from French: cuirasse, body armour for the chest and back, worn by cavalry and infantrymen from antiquity through the Napoleonic era) is one of Mitoraj's most direct engagements with the vocabulary of Roman military equipment. Unlike the Centurione, which focuses on the head and face, the Cuirasse centres on the trunk — the core of the body that armour was designed to protect, and which Mitoraj renders simultaneously armoured and incomplete.
The Armour Motif in Mitoraj's Work
Mitoraj made armour a recurring sculptural subject from the mid-1980s onwards. The Corazza Media and Corazza series (corazza = Italian for cuirasse) address the same theme at smaller scale; the Cuirasse II is among the more substantial armoured torso works. In all these pieces, the armour paradoxically exposes the vulnerability of the figure beneath — the body reduced to its protective shell, the crossing straps emphasising the chest cavity they guard rather than the flesh inside.
The crossing straps of the Cuirasse II also connect to the binding motif that runs through Mitoraj's entire practice — the horizontal bands across the Centurione's eyes, the wrapping of Prométhée, the bandaged heads of the Tête Secrète and Visage Envoilé series. In each case, restraint and concealment are doubled: the body is both disciplined and protected, both prisoner and soldier.
Cuirasse II in the Context of the Armoured Body
The division of Mitoraj's bronzes into head fragments and torso fragments is one of the organising principles of his oeuvre. The Centurione, Tête Secrète, Kea, and Persée series are primarily head works; the Corazza, Cuirasse, and Torso Bijou series are torso works. This division reflects the classical tradition of fragmentary sculpture — the reduced inventory of the excavated body — but Mitoraj intensifies it by making the fragment feel not like a loss but like a selection: each fragment is sufficient in itself, complete as a form even as it is incomplete as a body.
The Cuirasse II's armour also makes it a work explicitly about masculinity and military culture in a way that the more neutral torso fragments avoid. It places the body in a specific historical context — the Roman legionary, the Renaissance condottiere, the Baroque cavalry officer — while simultaneously abstracting it into the timeless vocabulary of Mitoraj's classical-modern synthesis.
Collection Photographs — Cuirasse II
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Contact Me DirectlySee also: Centurione II (1986) · Corazza Media · All Mitoraj bronzes · Auction prices
About Igor Mitoraj's Armoured Torso Series
The armoured and bound torso is one of the recurring motifs in Mitoraj's bronze practice. From the Corazza Media and Corazza series to the Cuirasse works and the Torso Bijou, these pieces share a preoccupation with the body simultaneously protected and constrained — the armour as a sign of both military power and bodily vulnerability. The Cuirasse II brings this motif into a specifically Roman register: the breastplate of the legionary, excavated from time and presented as a relic of classical civilisation. The work belongs to the same cultural project as the Centurione — a meditation on Rome as the enduring template of Western order, found in fragments.