Francesco Gonzaga Charging Across the River Taro

Francesco Gonzaga Charging Across the River Taro:

I am not entirely certain where this picture of my Gonzaga vignette was taken or even when. I have a vague recollection of it being for Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine but that's about it.

Anyway, it is another found object from an old laptop and thought I would make a quick post as I'm certain that it has not featured on my blog before.

Francesco Gonzaga Crossing the River Taro Vignette(Formerly from Gewalthaufen Blog)

Here it is, finally, the vignette I've been working on of Francesco II Gonzaga leading the Italian Men at Arms in a charge at the Battle of Fornovo crossing the River Taro during Charles VIII's ill fated invasion of Italy to capture the Kingdom of Naples.

Many military historians have postulated battles that mark the end of Medieval warfare; in Britain we usually refer to the Battle of Bosworth or the Battle of Stoke Field but in fact history is very much in a state of flux and it is really impossible to pin down when one period finished and another begins. However, if I personally was to choose one campaign and one battle I would have to say that Charles VIII's invasion of Italy in 1495 and the Battle of Fornovo, if anything are about as close as we are going to get in the Western world to a Medieval ways of war moving closer to what we would define as Renaissance warfare.

Charles VIII artillery train is but one aspect that exemplifies my point, his use of Swiss mercenaries armed with their pikes is another.

Anyway, without too much waffling from me, here are the pics:

A note on the livery that I have chosen for Gonzaga's retinue. The yellow and black are taken from the centre of his banner. Information regarding heraldry in English is particularly hard to come by when it comes to The Italian Wars so it was a necessity to take an educated guess as to what his livery might have been. Lack of information will be a common theme to many Late Medieval wargamers but it is particularly difficult to get information for The Italian Wars say, compared to the Wars of the Roses which are relatively well documented.

One last thing I should mention is that the heraldic banners are printed onto a fine cloth by Pete from Pete's Flags which are available from his blog HERE. They really are charming painterly renditions of banners, standards and flag and I would highly recommend them to all.

Cheers

Gonzaga Crossing the River Taro at Fornovo Vignette- (Formerly from Gewalthaufen Blog)

Splashing Through the River Taro

For the first piece of the Fornovo demo game that I'm planning on putting on at Salute (hopefully with the Lance and Longbow Society, but nothing is written in stone as of yet), my heart was set on doing a vignette of Gonzaga as he charged through the River Taro. This was largely inspired from the artwork of Richard Hook in the Osprey Fornovo 1495, Campaign  book.

I got as far as the planning stages, some might say that it's still in the planning stages although the paint starts to get applied tonight (hurrah!).

OK, so up until now I had the chap below standing in for Gonzaga's banner bearer (with the chap above, on foot, carrying the banner of Venice):

The new Banner Bearer:

All well and good you might think? Well, not really. Although ideal in terms of dynamism and posture the chap above is fully encased in German 'Gothic' style armour and as I was using the Richard III Memorial Miniature as Gonzaga (painted my none other than moi)  from Perry Miniatures who was already encased in armour probably of German origin (if not then an English copy) then the piece was going to lose it's Italian flavor which I was really looking for. The mini also has the advantage of wearing a tabard particular to Italy at the time of the battle.

So, a quick conversion was in order. I took one of the mounted miniatures from the Perry's EA12, Mounted Italian Command packs, the one gesturing with his right hand. I carefully cut his right hand off and to this was added one of the hands (and fingers- if you try this make sure that the fingers are very well bonded to the hand!) and simply drilled through and added a suitable metal banner pole.

Hopefully we have one great model for Gonzaga's somewhat delayed attack across the River Taro near Fornovo.

Painted vignette to follow!

St. Valantine

Saint Valentine of Rome states that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. There are other sources of the origin of the day but this is the one I have chosen to depict.

OK, seeing as it's St. Valentine's Day..... what could be more romantic (and chivalrous) than: Francesco Gonzaga and his Doomed Charge Across the River Taro at the Battle of Fornovo 

1495(?):

river.............

............

Bye for now.