Family pictures and dynastic representation of civic families in late medieval Nuremberg (14th -16th century)

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Research in the fields of history and art history has so far ignored the late medieval family pictures. Thus the research follows Philippe Ariès, who claimed that a sense of family developed for the first time in the 16th century to such a degree that it were reflected in the arts. Our preliminary work however proves an increasing distribution of family pictures as a new type of pictures since the middle of the 14th century. This new type occurs first in a religious context in the form of pictures of endowment, showing the benefactor with relatives, of the high nobility. About 1400 these pictures became increasingly popular with the middling sort, a phenomenon which can be traced in the chosen example of the imperial city of Nuremberg. Therefore the research project intends to explore family pictures of the 14th to the 16th century as a new type of dynastic representation by a case study of Nuremberg.It is necessary for it to date the family pictures exactly and to identify the purchasers. The research on the ways of representation and those depicted intends to show social and dynastic intentions and a late influence of the sujet of the Holy family. Further we are interested in how and when the pictures grew out of the religious context in the social spheres of civic and noble self-fashioning. In addition, family pictures have to be contrasted with other forms of dynastic politics and representation that were easily available, e.g. testamentary contracts, house historiography etc. In that, the reception of late medieval family pictures in family historiography of the 16th till the 18th century is intended to investigate too.