This article is on the correlation between signs, images and objects of warfare in one of the most proliferate texts of the Italian Renaissance: Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516, 1521, 1532) and their nachleben in Miguel de Cervantes Don Quijote (1605). In a further step, this article juxtaposes the literary armory outlined in these texts with the material culture of armors and weapons in 16th century Italy. The analysis of the pictoral iconography displayed on these objects points to changing constructions of maleness on the threshold of modernity. In particular, I argue that rhetorical and narrative elements of contemporaneous literature play a decisive role in this process of transforming gender models into tangible realities.