Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries, editor, Carmine Romano, c. 2024

Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries, editor, Carmine Romano, c. 2024, 

catalogue, coffee-table book to accompany the first-ever showing of the seven tapestries all at one time except for their permanent home in Italy; currently showing at Kimbell Art Museum, Ft Worth, TX. Really, really nice addition to our coffee-table art books.

The museum showing, first time in the US, to observe the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Pavia, the seven tapestries and armor from the Farnese armory:

• Kimbell Art Museum, Ft Worth TX;
• the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and,
• the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The war:

• four hours, around dawn, February 24, 1525
• imperial army: Spanish and Hapsburgs, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor vs France, King of France, François I
• Holy Roman Empire controlled most of Europe but needed the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples to have political and geostrategic supremacy over the Mediterranean
• Kingdom of Naples (really, the Kingdom of Sicily; two Sicilies, the Strait of Messina)
• Pavia: was a town near Milan, northwestern Italy
• the arquebus, the forerunner to the flintlock musket; link here;
• developed to penetrate armor protecting a knight and protecting the knight's horse
• the arquebusiers quickly killed the French lords on horses

The Bellenger installation of the Battle of Pavia tapestries, 2022, Naples, the photograph p. 71, reminds me of the lily ponds, Monet, in the Musée de l'Orangerie. Link here.

The Fine Arts Museum Page
Kimbell Art Museum, Ft Worth, Texas

The Battle of Pavia Tapestries.