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.
