Leather Box for the Pennant of Francis I at the Battle of Pavia

Description This box was a Habsburg secular reliquary. The inscription inside records that it once held the personal pennant of the French king Francis I, taken at his capture in 1525 on the battlefield at Pavia, Italy, after the defeat of the French army by that of Emperor Charles V. The box, made to contain the folded silk pennant, bears the arms of the Habsburg commander Don Juan Lopez Quixada, who captured the pennant (now in the Musée de la Porte de Hal, Brussels).

Exhibitions

• World of Wonder. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1971-1972.
• Treasures of Heaven. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; The British Museum, London. 2010-2011.

Provenance Charles Stein (1840-1899), Paris [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, [date of acquisition unknown] by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Translation] on interior lid, engraved on two plaques of silver (apparently cut from another object): Don Juan Lopez Quixada, doctor of canon law and choir master, won the standard that lies here and these very saint relics when the King of France lost the Battle of Pavia and was made prisoner by the Spaniards the 25th of February of the year 1525

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters