Genealogy and the Politics of Representation in the High and Late Middle Ages

Addressed to art historians and medievalists, Visualizing Ancestry examines the forms and functions of family trees and other figural expressions of lineage in twelfth- through fourteenth-century Europe, studying their flexible roles in legitimizing rulers and office-holders, supporting political claims, and commemorating the dead.

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Images and image cycles with genealogical content were everywhere in the high and later Middle Ages. They represent families related by blood as well as successive office holders and appear as family trees and lineages of single figures in manuscripts, on walls and in stained glass, and in sculpture and metalwork. Yet art historians have hardly remarked on the frequency of these images. Considering the physical contexts and functions of these works alongside the goals of their patrons, this volume examines groups of figural genealogies ranging across northern Europe and dating from the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century. Joan A. Holladay considers how they were used to legitimize rulers and support their political and territorial goals, to reinforce archbishops' rights to crown kings, to cement relationships between families of founders and their monastic foundations, and to commemorate the dead. The flexibility and legibility of this genre was key to its widespread use.