James Walker's monumental work, The Battle of Gettysburg: Repulse of Longstreet's Assault, July 3, 1863

This past week I presented on the monumental canvas, The Battle of Gettysburg: Repulse of Longstreet’s Assault, July 3, 1863, at the Boston Athenaeum. As part of a sponsored program for the current exhibition, Subscription Campaigns: Contributions in Support of Community, this talk explored the history of the panoramic painting and its subsequent souvenir industry. (You can read about the talk here.)

Six years in the making, James Walker’s twenty-foot long by seven and a half feet wide The Battle of Gettysburg debuted in Boston on March 14, 1870. No less than five major Boston newspapers lauded the work’s sweep and substance, praising its “remarkable minuteness and comprehensiveness and . . . fidelity.” Indeed, several of the generals depicted in the work (Longstreet, Meade, Hancock, Webb, Hall, and others) vouched for its accuracy—and its pathos. After its first appearance, The Battle of Gettysburg embarked on a cross-country tour with owner, the historian John Badger Bachelder, to “delight and instruct” American audiences. The popularity of the picture and the narrative of the battle of Gettysburg generated a souvenir market including guide books, descriptive keys, and small-scale print reproductions. This cottage industry around Walker’s panoramic painting enabled Bachelder to shape Americans’ popular—and persistent—perceptions of the battle.

 

 --Erin R. Corrales-Diaz, Assistant Curator of American Art

Image: James Walker, The Battle of Gettysburg: Repulse of Longstreet’s Assault, July 3, 1863, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina

 

Europe’s Oldest Treatise on Swordfighting

 I’m delighted to report that the new edition of my transcription and translation of Royal Armouries Manuscript I.33 has just become available. Sometimes known as the “Walpurgis Fechtbuch,” I.33 is the oldest known book on swordfighting, having been written in Germany in the early 1300s. I started transcribing and translating the crabbed Latin of this manuscript in the early 1990s, when it was still kept at the Tower of London, and it was this work that first put me on a professional career path in the world of arms and armor. I first published I.33 with the Armouries in 2003, but there’s been a lot of research on this manuscript since then, so the new edition incorporates all the latest findings.

I.33 uses words and illustrations to describe a system of swordplay using a buckler—a small round shield that was used in unarmored swordfighting. Surprisingly, the figures who demonstrate the techniques are a “priest” and a “student.” This suggests that the manuscript may have been produced by staff at a cathedral school, the forerunner of the medieval university. We do know that medieval university students liked to engage in swordfighting, a tradition that survives even today in some German universities. Even more surprisingly, at the end of the manuscript the student is replaced by a woman named Walpurgis. Her presence remains a mystery, a reminder of how much we have yet to learn about the culture of arms in medieval Europe.

—Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art

https://shop.royalarmouries.org/books-and-dvds/royal-armouries-publications-en/the-medieval-art-of-swordsmanship-royal-armouries-ms-i.33.html