Wolfgang von Polheim

He appears prominently, in a jousting context, in two works of art commissioned by Maximilian: the monumental woodcut, the Triumphal Procession, and in some of the miniature paintings of the Freydal tournament book.

[1][2] In 1477, Polheim accompanied Maximilian to the Low Countries for the latter's marriage at Ghent to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Charles the Bold.

[1] For the next twelve years, Maximilian remained in the Low Countries trying to maintain his control over his wife's Burgundian inheritance in the face of French expansion and internal dissent.

He campaigned with Maximilian to repulse Louis XI of France's attempts to seize the Burgundian territories but was taken prisoner by the French at the Battle of Guinegate in 1479.

[7][9][10] According to the 19th-century German historian Hans von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, "the not entirely normal role he played in this made him well-known in all the countries of Christendom".

[2][14] Maximilian made him an administrator of a number of imperial estates including at Frankenburg in Upper Austria where his harsh rule provoked a peasant revolt in 1511.

[note 2] At another tournament, staged in the ducal menagerie in Brussels, Polheim jousted with a basket of eggs resting on his helmet and Maximilian wore a chained frog as a crest.

[25] During his reign, Maximilian commissioned a number of humanist scholars and artists to assist him in completing a series of projects, in different art forms, intended to immortalize his life and deeds and those of his Habsburg ancestors.

[28] In the Triumphal Procession, a monumental series of woodcut prints depicting an imagined "royal entry", Polheim is given a role of particular importance.