Battle of Pavia: The Capture of King Francis I

On 24 February 1525, in the walled park outside Pavia, the imperial army of Charles V routed the French and took their king, Francis I, prisoner. Six years later the States General of the Netherlands presented the emperor with seven tapestries of that battle, and this is the one of the capture. Left of centre a horse has gone down in a dark-blue caparison strewn with gold fleurs-de-lis, and armoured men are holding up its rider in a plumed helmet. The commanders' names are woven in gold thread on harness and scabbards, so a viewer could read who was who. Vicente Álvarez, a member of Prince Philip's household who saw the set at Binche in 1549, noticed that every captain was named except the Spaniards, who, he wrote, must have been asleep that day. In 1556, during a truce with France, the tapestries hung in the great hall of the emperor's palace in Brussels, and the French envoy, Admiral Coligny, complained that he was being shown how his king's father had been taken.