On display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the exhibition “Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries” presented, for the first time in the United States, the complete cycle of seven monumental tapestries depicting the Battle of Pavia, fought on 24 February 1525 between the French army led by King Francis I and the imperial forces of Charles V. Many historians regard this event as the beginning of the modern era in Europe.
The tapestries, recently restored in Italy and part of the permanent collection of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, were exhibited alongside preparatory drawings preserved at the Louvre Museum in Paris and exquisite arms and armour from the period, also loaned by the Museo di Capodimonte.
The Battle of Pavia tapestries, crafted with threads of silver and gold woven with precious wool and silk sourced from around the world, are among the masterpieces of 16th-century Flemish textile production. The Capodimonte series is unique in its subject matter: it is the first time that a contemporary event was depicted in such an extensive tapestry cycle.
To mark the exhibition’s closing, the de Young Museum, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, organised a two-day international symposium titled “Art + Propaganda in the European Tapestry”. The event explored the theme of reconstructing historical events through artworks like tapestries, which served as powerful tools for celebration, political, and religious propaganda.
The symposium featured art historians and tapestry scholars, including Italian experts Francesca Borgo (University of St Andrews), Alessandra Rodolfo (Vatican Museums), and Lucia Meoni (Accademia del Disegno, Florence).
