René II: Duke of Lorraine

Well it's taken many hours but I've finally got my first mounted man at arms done! I have painted this one up to represent René II - Duke of Lorraine who will be the leader of my Swiss force. I used one of the bodies with a surcoat on as a basis, as I was keen to try and get René's heraldry on there. However I then realised I didn't have a clue what this looked like. A brief inspection of the Perry box showed he wasn't on there - so I set about researching. I came across this image depicting the Battle of Nancy which looks reasonably contempary

 

 René is on the white horse, and his surcoat looks a lot like this other image I found:

So I based the surcoat loosely upon it, and this is the result

As you can see there are a few elements I didn't include, however I'm happy with it and think it's still recognisable. I've used one of the horses with the full Italian armour for his mount, I figure if anyone could afford the whole panoply it would be a Duke! I only plan on using around 4 of the fully armoured horses throughout the unit, the rest will just have trappers or nothing.

Sadly the horse seems to obscure the surcoat a bit but I like the final result. I've got to say these figures are definitely some of the best I've come across in about 15 years of painting, the details that's been incorporated is crazy and with the seperate hand system they're also ridiculously versatile. Now just another 11 to go... That's a lot of plate armour!