вЂњ The Last Knight: The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I,вЂќ an exhibition of grand scale and heavy metal at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plots the relentless rise of this most elegant of Hapsburg propagandists. It was images of the warrior emperor, and public spectacles of chivalric glory, that made Maximilian a legend.

He had some successes on the battlefield, yet it was not principally his military prowess that made his name. He was Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire, and out of an iffy inheritance in Austria he emerged as one of the most powerful leaders in Renaissance Europe, presiding over territories from the modern-day Netherlands all the way to Croatia. War is a storyteller, with a tale so grand and corrupt that even death becomes beautiful.ДЇive hundred years ago, at a moment of political rebellion and economic anxiety, a leader arose who understood the public allure of the martial imagination, and how war could turn a noble into something like a superman. War muffles brute inequities of power and capital, and entrances you with blandishments of honor. War can pick up the dull, lousy clay of your little human life, and refashion you into a hero or martyr. вЂњ War is a force that gives us meaning,вЂќ wrote the veteran foreign correspondent Chris Hedges - an adage he delivered with vicious irony.

Holy roman empire knight