Italian Wars Cavalry

On Saturday I finished flocking my Italian Wars cavalry, which completes the "February and March" sections of my Italian Wars painting schedule (although that schedule does not accurately reflect that I ended up painting 30 Elmeti and 30 Gendarmes and not the 18 of each original envisioned).  These 72 cavalry were completed between February 11 and April 7th, about 8 weeks.  I have painted 228 Italian Wars figures since December 1 of last year, and 288 figures since last June, and have reduced something over 20 full bags of Old Glory miniatures to just 1 (a pack of Spanish genitor cavalry) (not including the next batch I am now starting).  Since part of this project was not only to paint up armies for a game at Enfilade in May, but also to significantly reduce my 'lead mountain', I am obviously very pleased right now!

The Italian Elmeti (Old Glory condottiere) by were super easy as the horses are not armored and the riders are wearing plain plate armor without even plumes for decoration.  The Elmeti armor may be a little old fashioned by the Italian Wars but I want them to be visually distinctive from their opponents.  The French Gendarmes were the big time-consumer this time around, since I was going for a rainbow effect of several combinations of colors on those. All figures are Old Glory except two of the Stradiot light cavalry which are by Perry.  I also started but did not complete three commander figures. In the 'assembly line' painting process for painting these, three individual figures just got skipped over repeatedly - I have added these to the next batch which has quite a few command stands in it as well.

GENDARMES









ELMETI









STRADIOTS







ALL THE CAVALRY SO FAR



Up next:

8 artillery stands with crew.
12 mounted crossbowmen.
6 or 12 light cavalry for the French.
Assorted mounted command stands.
4 baggage wagons.