Battle of Orsha (painting)

The Battle of Orsha (Polish: Bitwa pod Orszą) is a painting of the Battle of Orsha, which was fought on September 8, 1514 between the allied forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland (to the right hand side of the painting) against the Vasili III's army of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (left) as part of the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars.

There is a self-portrait of the artist as an unarmed figure in German costume (near bottom, right of centre), sitting on a tree stump on the bank of the Dnieper river, looking at the battle, while framing his fingers to compose a view.

[2] According to one hypothesis the author of the picture was the German artist Hans Krell, court painter of Louis II of Hungary.

[3] The image shows a bird's eye view of several stages of the battle; the same characters appearing in different places - Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski is shown three times.

Details of equipment and weapons and portraits of the commanders have been recreated realistically and with great accuracy, showing, among others, such scenes as emptying water from armor after crossing the river.