Printed plan of the siege of Pavia in 1525. Hard-colored woodcut (22 x 30 cm), likely printed in Basel in 1525. Preserved in Pavia, Musei Civici (photo by Pieter Martens, 2022).
Nowadays, we take it for granted that every news article in a newspaper is accompanied by a striking image—usually a photo, sometimes a cartoon or an infographic. This image-driven journalism may seem like a phenomenon of our time, but according to Pieter Martens, Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the hunger for news images is centuries old.
"We can even say that visual journalism turned exactly 500 years old yesterday," says Martens. "On February 24, 1525, the famous Battle of Pavia took place. French troops besieging the northern Italian city were crushed by the relief army of Emperor Charles V. The crème de la crème of the French nobility perished on the battlefield, and the French king was captured. Charles V himself was not present in Pavia that day—coincidentally his 25th birthday—but the glorious victory of his troops over the French archrival strengthened his power in Europe and was widely celebrated and highlighted—literally. It was the first news event ever to be depicted on a large scale through prints and paintings."
Immediately after the battle, news reports were printed: pamphlets of a few pages containing a brief account of the event along with an accompanying illustration. Some were propaganda, but not all; most were created by people who had been present as eyewitnesses—‘journalists’ of their time. "They essentially made the very first precursors of the newspaper," Martens explains. "Loose news prints also circulated: woodcuts depicting the battle with some explanatory captions but no further text. These prints then served as models for numerous paintings that commemorated the battle in a larger format and in color. About ten of these paintings still exist today. Back then, there must have been hundreds in circulation across Europe, ranging from mediocre works on canvas to refined masterpieces on panel by renowned painters. And they were not just for the wealthy elite. In Antwerp, for example, many ordinary citizens had a painting of the Battle of Pavia hanging on their walls. Until the news event became outdated a few years later, and the painting was replaced by a more recent subject. Like a distant, slow predecessor of television."
The most impressive of all is the stunning series of seven tapestries woven in Brussels a few years after the event for the emperor himself, now on display at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples (though they are currently on tour in America). These tapestries magnificently and vividly depict consecutive battle scenes and, as was only recently discovered, together form a continuous 60-meter-wide panorama of the battlefield. A kind of frozen cinema.
“The Battle of Pavia was certainly not the first historical event to be depicted in news images,” Martens notes. He himself completed a doctorate on military architecture in the 16th century—the century in which relatively reliable images of sieges and military positions were first produced. "However, the Battle of Pavia was the first instance in which this happened on such a massive scale, and in which the visual material also illustrated two major innovations," Martens explains. "First, with the rise of the printing press, the new genre of the news print became wildly popular in a short period. These were cheap prints, published shortly after the events, and in large quantities, showing remarkable current events to a broad audience—such as gruesome crimes, miraculous births, or astronomical phenomena, but especially the many military exploits of the wars of that time. Second, for the first time, the images were no longer pure fabrications but were created by eyewitnesses, making them realistic and reliable—or at least claiming to be. Through such ‘drawn from life’ prints, people could view the latest news as if they had been there themselves. The public began to value the truthful depiction of events, people, and places in the news. These two innovations made the visual material of the Battle of Pavia the earliest example of what we can call ‘modern’ visual reporting."
Despite the newfound attention to topographical and factual accuracy, the images did not provide an exact representation, nor were they entirely objective. Distortion occurred inevitably, whether intentional or not. “The sketches made by an eyewitness on-site were first reworked into a skilled composition to summarize all scenes into a single image. That image was then copied multiple times, usually with some modifications—details were omitted, added, or altered. Sometimes these were unintentional mistakes or careless errors, but often they were deliberate manipulations to emphasize certain people or actions. A German news print of the battle, for example, changed the viewpoint to place German soldiers in the foreground.”
“Historians who want to use these images as sources must therefore examine them critically and not take their claimed credibility at face value,” Martens concludes. "Just as today’s newspaper readers should critically analyze the images on news pages. Visual literacy is more essential than ever in times of Photoshop and deepfakes, but the manipulation of news images is as old as news images themselves—exactly five hundred years old today."
More information
Pieter Martens (Hoofddocent architectuurgeschiedenis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel): Pieter.Martens@vub.be.
