Landsknecht Arquebusiers

 

A return to the Landsknechts !

Landsknechts have been on my mind for quite a while now since (shameless plug) writing the painting guide for the Helion book All is Lost Save Honour.

This is part 2 of a re-basing project for the Landsknechts in my collection, some of which were painted quite a while back. I opted to re-base and re-invigorate my troops by adding newly painted figures to the older ones in my collection then mixing them. This worked really well for the pike in my collection, you can read more about that here.

As with the pike I also took this opportunity to re-configurate the bases from open skirmish order to a more tightly closed order which is generally how they appear in woodcuts when giving close support to the pike.

Here are some close ups, I think the difference of a decade or so shows between my past and current painting styles but they mix well.

Detail of the unit. I use an altered version of the Lion Rampant rules (available via the Army Royal Facebook group) so these are actually two units of 10 figures a piece.

Here are some photographs of the figures prior to basing. I like to work from a primary source whenever I paint a unit of Landsknechts. The inspiration for these came from a painting by Melchior Feselen, 'the siege of the city of Alesia', painted in 1533.

Feselen was a contemporary of Albrecht Altdorfer and this influence is present in his work. The formations below are tight and seem to come from life, perhaps he saw service? or more likely this may have come from sight of regular state musters.

You can view a really good quality zoomable image of this here, there's so much going on in it, the Arquebusiers and pike are at the bottom of the painting. I particularly like the wide hats (tellerbarrett) with decorative brims.

Assuming I stay on this rebasing/re-invigorating trajectory there will be further Landsknechts ! I've really enjoyed using this approach as it means units are not only freshened up but also boosted in numbers and, you can never have too many Landsknechts !

All the best

Stuart