At the moment the Pavia tapestries are on a tour of the United States while their permanent home at the Museo di Capodimonte in Napoli is being refurbished. This last weekend I took a trip down to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston to visit the tapestries. Seeing the tapestries in person was more impressive than I could have ever imagined. I spent four hours in total just admiring them. Every few minutes I found something new in them, despite having studied them in books for the best part of a year.
In this post I will first post picture of the complete tapestries and then I will point out five things that I observed in the tapestries that you may not see from a quick viewing.
The tapestries.
As the tapestries are huge, I used panoramic mode on my phone and walked along the length of the tapestries to get the images. This meant that the image is flat like the tapestries themselves. One downside is that some of the border needs to be cropped.
Five interesting items in the Pavia tapestries
In this section I will highlight five things that I found interesting on the tapestries. Some are useful from a gaming perspective. Others are just things that appealed to me. I will probably follow this post up with another five later in the month.
- The Imperial Light Cavalry
I have chose to model the Imperial Light Cavalry as Spanish Jinetes. However, in the tapestries I also saw what appeared to be some eastern stradiot type cavalry on the Imperial side. The first picture shows the typical Stradiot type hat. The second two picturse show a turban type headwear, which I have not seen in the Italian wars before.
2) Cavalry identification slashes
I was aware that the Imperial infantry had white and red identification slashes as shown in the first picture. I was not aware that the cavalry also had them, as evidenced by the second picture.
3) Sconces
The sconces on the imperial side were shown as different to those on the French side. The imperial sconces defending Pavia had slits in the sides and looked like a more permanent structure. Those on the French side, surrounding the city, did not.
4) Pikes versus cavalry
The general consensus seems to be that unless pikes are in a block, they are of little use in a more skirmish type roll. This picture shows individual pikes in combat.
5) Always a good time for a barbecue
While the fighting was going on at Mirabello, the hog was still roasting.
Summary
Visiting the Pavia tapestries was a highlight of the year. I would certainly recommend that anyone in the United States takes advantage of the situation and visits them while they are still in Houston.
Great insight thanks Martyn. I am in Naples in September and hope that they may be back there by that time – unlikely I expect but I can hope.
Recognising the amount of painting you are putting in to get ready, I would still expect to see a hog roasting behind the lines in some form of camp 🙂
Richard
Martyn,
I was reading in one of the various books on the battle that the Imperial light horse were Spanish and/or Neapolitan, but that at this stage the two were indistinguishable, that is the Neapolitans had Jinete / Ginete.
I have often seen reference in early Neapolitan wargames army lists to the use of “Turks” often depicted as horse archers.
Perhaps, what the figures on the tapestries represent are Neapolitan light cavalry, recruited from the Balkans, Stradiots or “Turks” describing Albanians or Greeks rather than Spanish.
Just a possibility….
Neil