To deconstruct a map, said Brian Harley, it is necessary to read between the lines and to place the cartographic facts within a specific cultural perspective. He used the ideas of literary critics to make historians of cartography aware that there is more to maps than initially meets the eye and that ‘facts’ are rarely what they first appear to be. By viewing a map as a product of a particular society, one can begin to understand why a map was made in the way it was, how it was used and valued, and its role in representing and transforming contemporary attitudes and perspectives. To search for the wider meaning of local maps, it is usually necessary to make inferences based on research into their backgrounds; one rarely finds documents giving explicit directions on how, and why, a map was to be drawn and decorated. If, as in many past studies in the history of cartography, maps are taken at face value, they can leave many of their secrets unrevealed and, indeed, can easily be misinterpreted.

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This article examines the visual and material culture of sixteenth-century elite ceremonial armours and the paradoxes inherent in using images of women to decorate them between 1525 and 1550. It argues that foreign invading forces and their allies exploited or inverted traditional gender binaries associated with the classical and humanist iconography of the Italian Renaissance, particularly its female allegorical forms, to visually signify power relationships between combatants during the Italian Wars. Rather than simply embodying masculinity, elaborate ceremonial armours with images of women are revealing of both ideals of masculinity and femininity during times of war. These portrayals were part of wider conversations about gender and power, about the strength and weaknesses of women, and, ultimately, women's inferior status to men, which were utilised in allegorical forms to make claims to authority on these elite forms of male dress.

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