A01=Chassica Kirchhoff
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
armour
Author_Chassica Kirchhoff
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HB
Category=HD
Category=N
Category=WCK
chivalry
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
early modern Europe
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
fifteenth century
Habsburg princes
Holy Roman Empire
Language_English
martial history
material culture
PA=Available
pageantry
Price_€100 and above
professional book painters
PS=Active
sixteenth century
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781837650439
- Weight: 736g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jun 2023
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The first extensive study of the depiction of the armour in the Thun-Hohenstein Album against the vibrant artistic and cultural contexts that created it.
In late medieval and early modern Europe, armour was more than a defensive technology for war or knightly sport. Its diverse types formed a complex visual language. Luxury armour was fitted precisely to a wearer's body, and its memorable details declared his status. Empty armour could evoke an owner's physical presence, prompting recollection of knightly personae, glittering pageantry, and impressive feats of arms. Its mnemonic power persisted long after the battle had ended, the trumpets had gone silent, and the dust had settled in the tournament arena.
Previously believed to contain preliminary designs sketched by master armourers, the Thun-Hohenstein album is a bound collection of drawings by professional book painters depicting some of the most artistically and technologically innovative armours of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Like a paper version of the princely armories that first formed during the 1500s, the album's images offered rich sites of meaning and memory. Their organization within the codex suggests the images' significance to their compiler. At the same time, the composition and details allow the reader to trace the transmission of recognizable armours, and the memories they embodied, from the anvil to the page.
This book is the first to examine the album, and the armor it depicts, in their vibrant artistic and cultural context. In five thematic chapters, it moves from case studies of these drawings to explore the album's complex intersections with the genres of martial history, material culture, and literature. It also reveals the album's participation in cultures of remembrance that carried mythic, knightly personae constructed around powerful Habsburg princes forward in time from the Middle Ages into the early modern era, from the courts of the Holy Roman Empire to emerging urban audiences.
Chassica Kirchhoff is an art historian who explores the history, meaning, and representation of martial material culture in medieval and early modern Europe. She is a curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA.
