Detail of “The Imperial Attack on the French Cavalry, Led by the Marquis of Pescara, and on the French Artillery by the Lansquenets under Georg von Frundsberg.” Image © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

By James D. Balestrieri

HOUSTON — Immersive experiences are nothing new. Commemorating a battle that took place half a millennium ago, the seven panels that comprise the Pavia Tapestries — each of which is 13 feet high; taken together, the tapestries are nearly 200 feet long — have a kind of endlessness about them. Thousands of figures populate the tapestries (I dare you to find any two that are alike) and all are engaged, you might say, immersed, in survival. The battle, in the imagination of the combatants, might have been a contest between knights in shining armor, a stately, chivalric, sort of thing, the stuff of epic poems, but the tapestries reveal that on the day a less medieval, more modern concept of conflict was at work — war is hell.

You can get lost in the tapestries of the Battle of Pavia. Better to say, perhaps, that you can lose yourself in the tapestries of the Battle of Pavia. And that, in the end, might be exactly what the designers and weavers intended.

Imagine the actual day of the battle in the Duchy of Milan: February 24, 1525. Imagine the mist on that frosted winter morning, the smoke from the cannons and arquebuses as the battle commenced. Imagine the confusion of the “fog of war,” as it is called, as the armies clashed and the battle joined, and you have some idea of a day that has been called a turning point, both in the history of Europe and in the history of warfare.

“The Imperial Attack on the French Cavalry, Led by the Marquis of Pescara, and on the French Artillery by the Lansquenets under Georg von Frundsberg,” designed by Bernard van Orley, woven by Willem and Jan Dermoyen, circa 1528-31, wool, silk, gold and silver thread. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples. Image © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. [Fourth panel].

Who were the combatants that day? The Holy Roman Empire, an amalgam of Hapsburg and Spanish nobles, ruled by Charles V (r 1519-1558), and France, whose king was François I (r 1515-1547). The two titans were fighting over an Italy that was not yet a nation state, but a collection of duchies, city states and regions fought over by warlord families. (Japan, at the same time, was going through much the same sort of upheaval.)

The most amazing thing, well, perhaps not the most amazing thing, but one of many amazing things about the Pavia Tapestries, is their historical accuracy. The most amazing thing is that all seven panels, on loan from the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, will be on display at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where they host “Knights in Shining Armor: The Pavia Tapestries” through May 26, 2025.

As far as their historical accuracy goes, there are many more recent battles that have not been commemorated with the same scrutiny. We know less about key battles in World War II and Vietnam than we do about the Battle of Pavia, in large part because of the tapestries, executed just a few years after the battle took place. The makers of the tapestries visited the site of the battle and consulted survivors to ensure that they were accurately representing the positions of the different regiments, their uniforms and weapons and their movements during a military action that, in fact, lasted little more than an hour. We can tell who many of the principal actors on the day were. Their portraits and deeds are readily discernible, woven into the fabric of the moment, as are their garments, their uniforms, their armor.

“The Advance of the Imperial Army and Counterattack of the French Cavalry Led by King François I,” designed by Bernard van Orley, woven by Willem and Jan Dermoyen, circa 1528-31, wool, silk gold, and silver thread. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples. Image © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. [Third panel].

On the fateful day, Charles V was in Spain, far from the battle. François I was on the field, in full armor. He was captured after leading a fierce countercharge when it quickly became clear that the French, who had been laying siege to Pavia, for some time, had been surprised and might be routed. The charge is depicted in the tapestry titled “The Advance of the Imperial Army and the Counterattack of the French Cavalry led by King François I.” The king, at right, identified by the fleur-de-lis on his armor, is about to kill the Marquis of Civita Sant’Ángelo (Italian nobles and mercenaries fought on both sides in the battle). Yet, as the exhibition’s catalog states, “The nobles of the royal retinue went into battle with precious and ostentatious trappings — making them easy to spot by the imperial arquebusiers, who shot them in large numbers.” Just as the Battle of Pavia ended French claims to northern Italy and brought to a close this chapter of the long imperial wars in Europe, the moment captured in this tapestry brought to a close the age of the armored knight — the gun won the day and would win the future.

You would think, as the saying goes, that the victors wrote — or wove — the histories, but we know that Charles wasn’t entirely pleased when the Pavia Tapestries were unveiled in 1531. By that year, François, who had been held hostage for only a year in Madrid — and had, by all accounts, been treated as befitted a monarch — the Holy Roman Empire and France were mending fences, albeit warily. Charles, we know, didn’t much care to see an image of Francois — a fellow monarch — taken captive. After all, what goes around can come around. Perhaps even more than that, Charles hadn’t been present on the day, hadn’t fought valiantly — which was more important than winning or losing. For the winners, the timing and optics weren’t all that great, even if the tapestries themselves were.

Detail of “Surrender of King François I.” Image © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

The tapestries have been lovingly restored, even the borders, which were added later, the originals having been lost over time. But — and here is where the Pavia Tapestries diverge from traditional sequential narratives — the order in which the tapestries are hung, and therefore, experienced, is paramount. Up until now, the order has changed over time, but new research by Dr Cecilia Paredes of the Université libre de Bruxelles is a revelation. As she discovered, and as the tapestries are now hung, “In looking at these precious Sixteenth Century hangings, they [viewers] are projected back in time, to stand at the edge of a raging battle. If they regard the whole room at the same time, they can realize that they are standing amid a continuous landscape that reveals itself out of the tapestries, through the connections of the features, details of the earthworks and military masses.”

In terms of action, the central panel — titled “The Imperial Attack on the French Cavalry, Led by the Marquis of Pescara, and on the French Artillery by the Lansquenets under Georg von Frundsberg” — represents the key moment in the battle. The two men in the title, as well as many others, including Alfonso d’Avalos, whose family would own and care for the tapestries for many years, are easily identified, but the composition depicts a melee, one we are in the middle of, battle and death from edge to edge, horizon to foreground. It’s an aesthetic choice that feels filled with intention. Friend, foe; comrade, enemy: as the eye and battlefield recede in what amounts to an astonishing feat of perspective, the combatants cannot be told apart. Their allegiances, their individuality, their very selves are lost as they become a single mass, a spiky organism, engaged in a kill-or-be-killed struggle we usually ascribe to the microscopic world.

In one of the many excellent catalogue essays, Dr Sylvain Bellenger, general director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, wrote, “The art of tapestry, especially Flemish tapestry, is distinct from painting in that it does not summarize, does not conceptualize, but rather illustrates, narrates, fills the composition with copious detail — in short, it ‘embroiders.’ Its vast area allows it to develop the action; it is cinematographic; its logic is that of the comic strip.”

“The Flight of the French Rear Guard Under the Duke of Alençon,” designed by Bernard van Orley, woven by Willem and Jan Dermoyen, circa 1528-31, wool, silk, gold and silver thread. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples. Image © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. [Seventh panel].

Bernard van Orley, the artist who created the cartoons for the Pavia Tapestries, had enjoyed fame for his work prior to 1520. Around that time, however, he encountered two artists who would enlarge his thinking and set him on the course that would result in the Pavia suite. The first was Albrecht Dürer, whose influence appears in the tapestries in the elements that surround and enfold the action, in the foliage and flowers, in the animals, topography and decorations that impart a superb realism to the panels. The second was Tommaso Vincidor, a companion of Raphael, who traveled to Brussels to oversee the Italian master’s cartoons translated into tapestries for the Vatican. Through Vincidor, Van Orley saw new possibilities for the tapestry as an art form and began to incorporate Raphael’s drama, flair for sequential action and depth of field.

If tapestries are the “frescoes of the North,” the Pavia Tapestries must be counted among the absolute masterpieces of the art form, alongside frescoes such as Mantegna’s “The Triumphs of Caesar” and Giotto’s Arena Chapel sequence. Like them, the sheer size and scope of the tapestries opens the door to an almost alchemical level realism that transforms the mythology of war into the horror of war. It’s interesting that, in painting, American artist Benjamin West’s 1770 work, “The Death of General Wolfe,” depicting an incident of pathos and heroism in the Battle of Quebec, which took place in 1759, is often cited as a milestone in the transition from the distant, unknowable past as a proper subject for history painting to the present, or, at least, the recent past, as a new and exciting alternative. And yet, here are the Pavia Tapestries, accomplishing the same thing on a greater scale, in a much more difficult medium, some 240 years earlier. And perhaps that’s where the trouble lies. West was an auteur, we might say, the great man as great artist, where “The Battle of Pavia,” and all such tapestries, are collaborative efforts achieved by a largely anonymous guilds of artists, thread makers and weavers. We have to fast forward to the panoramists in Milwaukee and elsewhere, post-Civil War, to find examples of large-scale, collaborative artworks — called “cycloramas” — such as the Battle of Gettysburg, created by teams of artists like Richard Lorenz and Paul Philippoteaux. Without auteurs, these too have received less attention from art historians.

That it could send a chill of dismay down the spine of an emperor, even while amazing others who saw it, makes “The Battle of Pavia” an essential work of art, a world treasure, one we might lose ourselves in as we, say, lose ourselves in Picasso’s “Guernica.”

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is at 1001 Bissonnet Street. For information, 713-639-7300 or www.mfah.org.