Through the works of great masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Ambrogio Bergognone, Bernardino Zenale, Pietro Perugino, the exhibition offers a prestigious and unique testimony of the splendid artistic and cultural flowering that Pavia experienced in the Renaissance. In one of the most iconic periods in the country’s history, the city was in fact an extraordinary artistic, political and cultural crossroads between Northern Europe and Italy.

The strength of the exhibition is the spectacular visual representation of the battle, offered by the seven monumental tapestries of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, all exceptionally loaned for the occasion, woven in the years 1528-1531 by the Flemish manufacture of Jan and Willem Dermoyen to designs by Bernard van Orley, to celebrate the victory of Charles V’s imperial troops over the French army led by King Francis I. The tapestries are brought together in the city that inspired them, after a major restoration and three major exhibitions in the United States, to give back to the public the complete visual narrative of the battle, immortalized with a pictorial and symbolic sensibility of surprising modernity.

The exhibition is curated by Francesco Frangi, Pietro Cesare Marani, Mauro Natale, Laura Aldovini, and Carmine Romano and Mario Epifani for the tapestry section. The initiative is organized by the Civic Museums of Pavia and the Promoting and High Coordination Committee for the Five Centenary of the Battle of Pavia.