"Nürnberg burgher militia and landsknechts 1502" Topic

I've just posted the next post about the painting of the battle before the gates of Nürnberg in 1502

This time I focus on the parts of the painting that shows the Nürnberg foot in action.

Follow this link for more photos and details
link

Good to see, thank you!

Daniel,

Regarding your research in general, how can you tell if extant examples are accurate, such as the one above? In addition, how does one know artistic liberty was not taken, and to an extent where it distorts the truth to render the example unreliable? Are there extant examples of arms and garb to support your claims? Are there lots of examples which tend to merge, thus one can safely conclude these are correct?

The same could be said for Victorian or Edwardian depictions of the English Civil Wars, or Wars of the Roses, where these "victories" were more often than not, overtly romanticized, and surly there are innumerable "authors" during these times which converged, but yet they have been shown to be inaccurate, supported by archeological evidence…Richard III, being the most recent, and prominent example which comes to mind.

In addition, I wonder how much was lost on purpose during the second world war, for Hitler to preserve much of his Austrian heritage, and romanticize the Germanic city states, that may have lost many a battles. I come to this conclusion based on his distain for depiction of Germany during the Film "War on the Western Front."

Thanks,

Wiliam.

Sorry, "All Quiet on the Western Front." Was multitasking/thinking at the time.

I am not sure wether Hitler ever mentioned any preference, but I would expect him to side with the Knights rather then the city states or counts. I am not aware of any deliberate removal of historical evidence for the Renaissance period under his reign, but if you have better information I am keen to learn.

More later.

Wiliam,

World War 1 and Germanys defeat in that war was a very sensitive subject for Hitler who took great pride in his status as a veteran "Frontkämpfer", hence his reaction to books like "Im Westen nichts Neues " and films like "Vier von der Infanterie". Dusty old history from the 16th Century such as feuding between a local noble and a city wasn't. While the Nazi's were certainly happy to put their own spinn on 16thC/17thC history I have like Puster never come across the removal/destruction of documents or art from that period. My impression is that the Nazi regime had their hands full with their campaign against modern "degenerate" art and books which were seen as a real danger.

They certainly didn't wreck any any of the Swedish memorials on TYW battlefields nor did they prevent Swedish military historians from accessing archives or traveling to battlefields even though they were very much writing about "German" defeats.

Daniel

They did undertake campaign to remove some Slavic historical elements. Especially from land ruled by Jaxa of Kopanick (In midst of today Berlin)

link

His coins are one of the rarest artifact due to nazi action of buyout to destroy them.

But here we see German on German feud.
There was no interest for racially motivated action there.

Thanks.
Great photos. I always struggle to make Landsknecht both belivable and good looking.

In my original post, the last paragraph was an afterthought, in hindsight, it probably should have been left out. I really was curious about Daniel's approach for accepting and dismissing sources as reliable.

William

Well, I cannot speak for Daniel, but as I think the image is pretty believable…

The main factor is sound judgement. Check the features against other illustrations, historical sources and archeological references. If the illustration contains a dozen features of which ten can be checked, the remaining will have a pretty high credibility. Remember the source and its intentions.

In this case, it was a contemporary illustration of an event that was certainly seen by many participants, so deviations from the equipment and dress would be pointless. The shown events certainly focuse on the Nürnberger perspective, and will not dwell on details that would be embarrassing. Details that do show aspects that are to the Nürnberger detriment thus gain credibility. Afaik none of the equipment or tactics shown is adverse to any other available information.

A comparison with "Victorian" or "Edwardian" art is imho inapproriate, as those painters certainly were not part of the depicted events or had access to anybody who was, and their intention was often national glorification rather then any informational aspect. The same of course goes for artists in France, Germany etc in this era. Any work has to be checked against the intention and information of its author – be it a work from the NS era or a modern historical work. The standards of modern works are better and more transparent, but still they are sometimes tainted by bias (or a subjective perspective). On the other side even heavily biased works can contain valuable information that just need to be used with care and source.

That said, from all the information I have on this picture it shows the Nürnberger perspective of the event in a recognizable version, without distortions that I would detect. The equiptment looks partly new to me (as in I have not seen it otherwhere) but it fits in style with the rest, which seems authentic to me. Daniel has a greater expertise here, so I also trust that he would detect mistakes that elude me.

William,
I'll hope you will forgive me for simplifying things a lot, as compressing years of lectures, reading and research into a forum post is a bit challenging.

As with written sources I have to evaluate them by asking a lot of critical questions and trying to answer them:

What knowledge did the painter have of of the subject of the painting and the specific items he painted in it?

Here artists who were also veteran soldiers get a high rating, Paul Dolnstein, Urs Graf and Nikolause Manuel Deutsch all had extensive experience with soldiers clothing, arms and armour and it shows in their drawings. As a result they get a high rating.

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen was not a soldier himself but accompanied Charles V on the Tunis campaign with an order to sketch the events, people and landscapes in order to create a first hand record of the campaign for posterity. So he also get a high rating.

Frans Hogenberg did not have any first hand experience with the Danish-Swedish war of 1563-1570, nor did he have much in the way of information from secondary sources. As a result his images of that war gets a low rating.

Why was the image made and for whom?

Was the image made to be a realistic portrayal or is a part of a religious painting, an allegory or a satirical piece?

For example:
I was once in a discussion where this image

was used as proof that peasant were used to fill out the rear ranks of pike blocks. The not so small problem is that it a cropped version of a much larger print, a look at the intact image shows that the landsknechts are fighting an army of priests, monks and devils(!) led by the Pope and that the entire image is a moral-political propaganda piece connected with the reformation rather than an attempt to show an actual battle formation in a realistic manner.

Urs Graf made several satirical drawings of Landsknechts which exaggerate certain parts of their apperance and equipment. This picture is one of them

Is there supporting sources and evidence?

You compare the content with other sources and evidence, i.e if a an eyewitness describes French ordonnance Archers in 1494-95 as being armed with longbows and wearing breastplates then an engraving of french troops with that kind of equipment is probably correct in that part.

On the other hand there are a number of prints showing Ottoman troops fighting in deep pike squares, something which is not at all supported by other sources.

Has artistic license been used?

A good example of artistic license to watch out for is the habit of artists to depict historical events using contemporary soldiers and clothing. So you get Albrecht Altdorfer painting Alexander the Great riding into battle in golden full plate armour while the Macedonian phalanx is a landsknecht gevierthaufen and so on.

Another example is Pieter Snayers who was_the_battle painter of the TYW period, in many of his paintings he depicted his infantry units with more pikes and in deeper formations that were actually used at the time. Mostl likely because they looked more impressive that way in his opinion.

What are the flaws & limitations of the image or the artists style? Why are these "errors" present?

Are details missing or wrong, and why are they missing or wrong? For example with a few exceptions Paul Dolnstein did not draw men wearing swords in his drawings of larger battles, probably because doing so would have been difficult and cluttered up the image.

A painting's value as a source may be limited, for example it may not be a usefull representation of tactics or tactical formations but could still give very usefull information about the dress and equipment of the soldiers. The 1502 painting is a good example of this.

I hope this made the methods I use a bit clearer?

Extant clothing is a very rare thing from the 16th Century, we mainly have to rely on pictorial evidence combined with written sources. In some lucky cases the "pattern books" used by tailors have also survived. Arms & armour is easier as we have a lot more surviving pieces to compare with not to mention the written sources that provide information about armour such as eyewitness accounts, muster rolls, militia ordinances, equipment purchases orders and so on.

Experimental archeology and reconstructed clothing/gear also plays a part as it helps you judge if a garment or piece of armour is plausible or even possible.

Daniel

Thanks Daniel,

You provided expected answers and reasons behind any work up for debate, using credibility, and contemporary contrast as a basis.

The genesis of my question(s), was a reaction to the fact you posted a link to a print/drawing/painting, etc., where I normally see you on the other end of things; i.e., dismissing the accuracies of various depictions. I assumed then you knew what you were getting into, so to speak, in that you planned for sometime to see extant examples of paintings you knew a bit about (in terms of artists?), and could pass along without question.

I think I was caught off guard, expecting the post to be something like, "Here is a link to a painting depicting…., and here are the reasons it is reliable…"

I forget at times you have more than just a strong affinity for this era, but are also an academic scholar, (although I always tended to ask my professors lots and lots of questions…just as my students do now.)

William