Writing Visual Histories

Florence Grant, Ludmilla Jordanova, Florence Grant, Ludmilla Jordanova

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350023451
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350023475
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Teaching History
• Index: History

What can visual artifacts tell us about the past? How can we interpret them rigorously, weaving their formal and material qualities into rich social contexts to reach wider historical conclusions? Unfolding key historiographical and methodological issues, Writing Visual Histories equips students to answer these questions, showing visual analysis to be a key skill in historical research. A multifaceted structure makes this a practical guide for writing and reflecting on visual histories. A first section includes six case studies -- on topics ranging from medieval heraldry to Life magazine. These examples are followed by an exploration of essential concepts that inform historical thinking about visual matters, a treatment of disciplinary practices, and discussion of the practicalities (such as accessing museum collections and organising permissions) that scholars working with visual sources have to navigate. This book is an invaluable tool kit for opening up a historical understanding of visual phenomena and practices of looking, and for writing that takes an integrated approach to studies of the past.

Essays

1

Heraldry topsy-turvy: Depictions and performances of dishonour and death

Marcus Meer

At first sight, this drypoint etching (Figure 1) by the fifteenth-century Master of the Housebook looks clearly heraldic: it features a shield (the escutcheon) on which is placed a helmet, in turn crowned by the elaborate and distinctive three-dimensional arrangement of the crest, all draped with the ornamental linen of the mantling.¹ On a second look, however, the image seems strangely out of order. Normally, the coat of arms placed on the shield consists of a unique combination of charges (for example beasts, flowers, weapons or architecture) and geometrical figures known as ordinaries (such as crosses and chevrons), often partitioned into more or less complex divisions (into halves, quarters and so on) of the field on the shield. While the absence of any distinctive colours (tinctures) is easily explained by the monochrome nature of the artwork, its other heraldic elements still seem to defy everyday expectations about ‘proper’ heraldry: the shield shows a figure in a headstand, while the crest consists of two equally curious figures, namely a woman sitting on the back of a man.

Figure 1 Master of the Housebook, Coat of Arms with a Peasant Standing on His Head, c. 1485–90, drypoint etching printed on paper, 13.8 × 8.5 cm (5⅜ × 3⅜ in.). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-947 (artwork in the public domain, photograph provided and released into the public domain by Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

In the late medieval period, roughly spanning the later thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, nothing seemed to convey a humorous reversal of the natural order of things quite as much as the idea of a woman being on top and thus ‘in charge’ of a man.² The man’s depiction with a distaff further underlined this sentiment, since this tool, typically associated with female work, had become a symbol attributed to emasculated, ‘shameful’ men.³ After all, in the Middle Ages, shame was defined in opposition to the idea of (male) honour, which next to inherited status crucially relied on the strict adherence to social norms and values, from Christian piety to martial prowess and sexual dominance.⁴ Little was therefore more shameful and dishonourable to medieval men than the kind of gender role reversal portrayed by the crest.

The theme of reversal also dominates the shield. In the Middle Ages, a body turned upside down was an attack on the natural order of things par excellence, not least because society itself was often conceptualized as a body governed by the king as its head.⁵ ‘Unnatural’ bodily reversal was a punishment reserved for criminals held to have stained their honour, which is why any honour-conscious person tried to avoid being hung upside down ‘in the manner of a thief’.⁶ The artist’s decision to depict such motifs associated with shame and dishonour in a coat of arms further added to this overarching theme of reversal. In the Middle Ages, heraldry and honour went together, so that contemporaries saw and presented coats of arms as outwardly visible expressions of this key quality, which defined a person’s status and thus their identity within the hierarchical order of late medieval society.⁷

Curiously, just as the artist of the drypoint etching turned the purpose of a coat of arms on its head, late medieval contemporaries all across Europe repeatedly turned these signs of honour themselves upside down. The purposeful reversal of coats of arms – the subversio armorum – appears time and time again throughout the source material, both in the form of images and in the shape of tangible shields turned upside down.⁸ But why were coats of arms turned upside down? What were the intentions of those who reversed arms, what were the interpretations of those who saw them, and what were the reactions of those whose arms had been reversed? Does this practice relate to negative connotations of bodily reversal and ideas of honour and identity so closely associated with heraldry, for instance? In short, how were coats of arms turned upside down perceived by late medieval contemporaries?

Among the first studies to embrace such questions concerning the visual culture of the late medieval period was Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, discussed in the introduction to this book, and David Freedberg’s The Power of Im ages, which was likewise dedicated to ‘the extraordinarily abundant evidence for the ways in which people of all classes and cultures have responded to images’.⁹ Today, to quote Kathryn Starkey, ‘from the perspective of the medievalist, understanding visual communication and concepts of perception in the Middle Ages is crucial to understanding medieval culture’.¹⁰ However, as part of this broader quest, a visual history of topsy-turvy heraldry in particular cannot solely rely on visual sources typical for the study of heraldry (seals, stone- and wood-carvings, stained glass windows, manuscript illuminations and so on). Instead, in order to understand this visual phenomenon and its contemporary perceptions, it is necessary to take a close look at textual sources, too, from literature and chronicles to administrative documents and court records. Texts preserve displays of the past for which no visual evidence has survived, either because they have been lost over the centuries or because they were never meant to be permanent. Perhaps more importantly, texts also allow for contemporary perceptions to be approximated as closely as retrospectively possible: often their authors will present their own interpretations, ponder the intentions of others, and describe individual and collective reactions to visual matters. Finally, it is helpful to pursue a geographically wide approach to avoid premature generalizations about the representativeness or uniqueness of a specific area and instead promote examination of differences and similarities of the same phenomenon across borders, not least because different places produced and bequeathed different kinds of sources.¹¹

For the curious case of reversed coats of arms, this multi-medial and comparative approach allows this chapter to trace late medieval perceptions of the phenomenon throughout Europe and in four different contexts: as a visual feature of letters of defamation, as an element of ephemeral rituals of punishment, as a means of equally short-lived but highly emotional public provocation and protest, and as part of the performance of funeral ceremonies. Throughout this process, it will become clear that perceptions of ‘the visual’, although they might appear universal and constant at first, remained at all times highly ambiguous and fundamentally dependent on the context(s) of their display.

Letters of defamation

In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Germany, letters of defamation were commissioned, copied and later printed in large quantities for display in public spaces such as the marketplaces of cities. Their texts scolded persons who had failed to meet important obligations such as the repayment of debts,¹² and in this effort the letters frequently also incorporated images which depicted visual representations of the accused in shameful ways. Next to figural depictions similar to the infamous pittura infamante found in Italy,¹³ these representations were often heraldic in nature.

In fact, in an acknowledgement of indebtedness the German count John V of Nassau (1455–1516) in 1488 explicitly agreed that his creditors may ‘display our likeness and arms as maliciously as they can possibly imagine’ should he default.¹⁴ What this defamatory creativity looked like can be seen in a considerable number of extant letters vilifying the arms of the letter’s target,¹⁵ frequently in combination with his seal as another important medieval means of identification.¹⁶ Thus, when Duke John III of Bavaria (1374–1425) had failed to repay a loan, a letter of defamation lamented the ‘deceptiveness’ and ‘malice’ of the duke, who ‘for such a small sum of money turned his back on his great name’.¹⁷ In retaliation, the creditor stressed, ‘I had the villain painted here with his deceptive seal’,¹⁸ and indeed the letter contains a depiction of a man with a seal stamp, marked with the arms of Bavaria, next to a pig (Plate 1). An additional taunt left no doubt as to the message this scene was supposed to convey: ‘I stand before this sow’s backside / And impress my seal onto it / Since it is no more use for letters and charters / And neither is my oath and honour.’¹⁹

The motif of reversal was employed for the same purpose. A letter of defamation issued against Landgrave Louis of Hesse (1402–58) in 1438 thus exclaimed that ‘one shall leave him hanging here with his arms shamefully painted’.²⁰ ‘Shamefully’, in this instance, was notably ‘upside down’. Although conspicuously clothed in aristocratic dress, the landgrave was depicted as hanging from the gallows by a rope tied around his feet in the manner of a thief (Plate 2).²¹ In addition to this figural representation, the disgraced landgrave was also identified by the coat of arms of Hesse, which was likewise turned upside down and suspended by a rope. In Regensburg, the Jewish merchants Saydro and Isaac Straubinger in 1490 chose to depict their peer Hans Judmann in the same manner, ‘to warn princes, counts, barons, knights and commoners and all others, that they should beware of this man who is without honour and faith, and who breaks promises made under his seal’.²² Again, the lack of honour proclaimed in the text was accompanied by the accused’s figure and arms turned upside down.

The subversio armorum in letters of defamation was not limited to the coats of arms of individual noblemen or merchants; it also targeted corporate bodies such as cities and their municipal arms. Thus, when Count John II of Wied (r. 1415–54) accused the City of Cologne of deliberately delaying the trial of an acquaintance, who had been imprisoned there in 1441, he threatened to ‘publicly and continuously shame’ the city if they did not expedite the procedure.²³ Since the townspeople did not comply with this ‘request’, the count issued letters with the municipal arms of Cologne turned upside down (Figure 2), much to the dismay of the townsmen, who felt that this display of their arms was no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Essays
• Concepts
• Practices
• Practicalities
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright