Fort Worth, Texas
Stand at the center of a large gallery at the Kimbell Art Museum these days, and you feel as if you're in the middle of a battlefield. Arrayed on the four walls are seven monumental 16th-century tapestries—each about 28 feet long and 14 feet high—depicting the 1525 battle in northern Italy between the armies of Francis I of France and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Here, a soldier holds his sword at the throat of an enemy, ready to thrust. There, a man is drowning as he tries to escape across the Ticino River and a woman is fleeing with her dog. And elsewhere, Francis, pulled from his wounded horse, is being led into surrender and a captivity that lasted a year.
![]() Battle costumes |
![]() "Advance" tapestry |
![]() Trying to Escape |
The Advance of the Imperial Army and Counterattack of the French Cavalry Led by King Francis I" provides a fascinating illustration of the "pike and shot" technique critical to the Hapsburg victory. In the background, emerging from a forest and carrying gracefully billowing standards, are soldiers equipped with arquebuses, mixed in with cavalry men armed with pikes to protect the riflemen whose still-inaccurate weapons might miss or misfire.
Van Orley also paid close attention to facial expressions and to dress—the armor, the uniforms and especially the splashy "puffed and slashed" costumes of German mercenaries fighting for Charles. Their sleeves and breeches were cut to allow the underlying layers of clothing to be pulled through, making rather ludicrous (but amusing) battle dress. Francis wears a majestically plumed helmet in one scene, matched only by the lavish headdress on his horse. Van Orley doesn't neglect the women: In "The Invasion of the French Camp and the Flight of Women and Civilians," a perfectly coiffed lady clad in a fashionable red velvet cloak with black puffed sleeves steals attention from the fighting men behind her.
For tapestries, these (and many more) are astonishing details. How did Van Orley do it? As far as is known, he never traveled to Italy. The panels were commissioned by Brussels authorities and given to Charles on a visit there just six years after the battle. Van Orley must have relied on contemporary reports, perhaps ordered by officials. Someone may have been sent to Pavia to survey the landscape. And surely it helped that master weavers Willem and Jan Dermoyen and their atelier executed this narrative, at the laborious rate of perhaps two inches, or a little more, a day, according to Thomas P. Campbell, a renowned tapestry expert and director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which will host this exhibition next fall.
These exquisite tapestries require time to truly appreciate. Fortunately, the Kimbell's explanatory labels, illustrated with pictures of details, call out several features or vignettes that are worth noticing in each panel. They help make every minute spent on this battlefield a gratifying victory for the viewer.
![]() The Sortie/final panel |