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Los Inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial/The Inventories of Charles V and the Imperial Family Fernando Checa Cremades (dir.), Bob C. van den Boogert, Friedrich Edelmayer, Dagmar Eichberger, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Jørgen Hein, Maria José Redondo Cantera, Miguel Ángel Zalama Rodriguez, Juan Luis González García (ed.), Los Inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial/The Inventories of Charles V and the Imperial Family . Madrid, Fernando Villaverde Ediciones, 2010. ISBN978-84-937083-1-3. Vol. ICarlos V; Juana I de Castilla, 1,197 pp.; vol. II, Isabel de Portugal, 1,125 pp.; vol. III, Margarita de Austria; Leonor de Austria; Isabel de Austria; Fernando I; María de Hungría; Catalina de Austria, 915 pp.
RIHA Journal
Apart from a deep respect for the achievements of the Habsburgs, Emperor Maximilian I transmitted to his heirs a practical attitude towards their art collections. Pearls and precious stones were extracted from set pieces to produce new ones; old-fashioned jewellery or silver objects were melted down; and tapestries, paintings and sculptures were publicly sold to pay off debts. By studying how some of these goods were reused, recycled, and recirculated among the Habsburg family members, I will explain how crown patrimony changed owners and kingdoms, and how the cult of their dynasty, actively promoted by Charles V, heightened the notion of a collective consciousness which served as a topos for aristocratic collecting in the Renaissance.
'The Inventory as Royal Object: Charles V and the Enumeration of Kingship'
The Medieval Book as Object, Idea and Symbol. Harlaxton Medieval Studies XXXI, 2021
In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century the Valois courts of France took stock of their worldly goods with unprecedented frequency. In a series of inventories they recorded, in the vernacular, often ad vivam and in considerable detail, their extraordinary collections of movable treasures, termed collectively joyaux. These encompassed, among other things, gold and silver plate, crosses, reliquaries, ymaiges of gold and silver gilt, rings, gems, hardstones and cameos; tableaux in ivory, enamel, amber, jet, ebony, mother of pearl, painted panel and parchment; velvet, silk and embroidered chapelles, sets of tapestry chambers and a host of curiosities from talismanic stones to unicorns' horns. From the period c.1360 to 1422, spanning the reigns of the Valois kings Charles V and Charles VI, we have more than twenty extant examples of major inventories, and many more minor ones, for most of the key political players of the period, including the dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy and Orleans, and some of their widows. 1 Their extent is remarkable: the 1363 inventory of Charles V as Dauphin has 900 entries; that of 1380 just before his death lists over 3900 items; 2 Jean de Berry's 41 * This article is part of a larger project for a book on the inventories of the courts of France in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the research for which was undertaken with a Leverhulme Major Research Award in 2016-18; I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for their support, and to Sarah Guérin, Nicholas Herman, Jenny Stratford and Michele Tomasi for stimulating discussions of Charles's inventory and their thoughtful comments on this paper. Julian Luxford's invitation to present this material was a much needed catalyst, and I thank him too for his editorial patience and skill. 1 These include two for Charles V (one as Dauphin); five for Charles VI; two for Louis of Anjou; four for Jean de Berry; one for Philip the Bold; one for his wife Margaret of Flanders; one for their son John the Fearless; one for Jeanne d'Evreux; and several for Louis of Orleans and his wife Valentina Visconti. There are many more smaller inventories relating to the pawning of goods or their movement, or recollements of earlier texts. These inventories have never been studied as a group nor properly 'inventoried' themselves, though a useful enumeration and discussion of some of the most important is to be found in R. W. Lightbown, Secular Goldsmiths' Work in Medieval France: A History (London, 1978), 10-13. 2 For Charles's inventory as Dauphin see D. Gaborit-Chopin L'inventaire du trésor du dauphin futur Charles V, 1363: les débuts d'un grand collectionneur (Nogent-le-Roi, 1996); his 1380 inventory, the subject of this paper, is published by J. Labarte, Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France (Paris, 1879). The item count of 3906 is his, and follows that written on the manuscript itself in small Arabic numbers-recopied; earlier texts were reused and draft versions were re-organised, retranscribed and amalgamated in various ways. 7 A single iteration may only tell part of the story, a story that relates not just to the contents of the inventory itself, but to how the very process of its creation, its materials, form, structure, use and reuse played a part in a dynamic visual, social or political strategy. Each version is a new and potentially revealing object, and not simply a reiteration of an earlier, existing text. This is certainly the case for the 1380 ad vivam inventory of Charles V, the subject of this paper, one of the most important and extensive examples of the period, and perhaps that most frequently mined since its publication in the 1870s by Jules Labarte. 8 It has always been considered in the literature as a straightforward list of things found in the king's residences, and sometimes even assumed to be a post mortem accounting exercise, 9 but a closer analysis of its form, its text, its copies and the context of its creation, as will be set out here, reveals something quite different: a political object, made under the direct agency and supervision of the king, a symbolic as much as a practical document that was carefully constructed and deliberately arranged, then guarded, copied, recopied, illuminated and in turn inventoried by the French monarchs and those in their ambit for 150 years or more after its creation. Charles V's Project The original version, its first iteration, was instigated by Charles on 21 January 1380 (new style), perhaps not inconsequently his birthday, just nine months before he died. 10 In poor health, with the expectation, it would seem, that his end 44 SUSIE NASH 7 10 The date that it was begun is recorded in the preambles as 21 January 1379, that is 1380 new style, as the year began at Easter at this point in France; Labarte did not recognise the Easter year start and as a result confuses the chronology of its various 14 1. Inventaire général de Charles V, c.1500; frontispiece attributed to Jean Perréal, parchment, 350 × 280 mm. BnF, MS fr. 2705, f. Cr.
The Plus Oultra Writing Cabinet of Charles V: Expression of the Sacred Imperialism of the Austrias
The Plus Oultra writing cabinet of Charles V on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum of London is an intarsia piece made by Italian craftsmen ca. 1532. This article examines the iconographic programme of the cabinet as an expression of the universal Christian empire of Charles V and the sacred imperialism of the Spanish Austrias. This programme is revealed in three scenes depicting the story of Gideon that decorate the outside of the cabinet fall front: the revelation of the angel to Gideon and the woollen fleece in allusion to the Order of the Golden Fleece of which Charles V was the grand master, the selection of the three hundred men, and the battle against the Midianites. These scenes are complemented by medallion heads of Roman emperors to portray Charles V as legitimate successor to the Ancient Roman Empire. The inside of the fall front is emblazoned with the emblems of Charles V: the Pillars of Hercules, the Plus Ultra motto, Saint Andrew's crosses and laurel motifs, while the allegorical figures of Temperance and Justice adorning the sides of the cabinet symbolise the virtues of a good governor. The fall front opens to reveal a set of drawers and doors decorated with one of the earliest examples of the vanitas: objects alluding to the fleeting nature of life and the pursuit of wisdom. From a stylistic standpoint, the scenes and decorative motifs of the cabinet suggest that it may have been made in the workshop of the Dominican friar Damiano da Bergamo which Charles V visited in 1529.
The Spanish Habsburgs and Dynastic Rule, 1500-1700 (Routledge, 2023)
Providing a novel research methodology for students and scholars with an interest in dynasties, at all levels, this book explores the Spanish Habsburg dynasty that ruled the Spanish monarchy between c. 1515 and 1700. Instead of focusing on the reigns of successive kings, the book focuses on the Habsburgs as a family group that was constructed in various ways: as a community of heirs, a genealogical narrative, a community of the dead and a ruling family group. These constructions reflect the fact that dynasties do not only exist in the present, as kings, queens or governors, but also in the past, in genealogies, and in the future, as a group of hypothetical heirs. This book analyses how dynasties were 'made' by the people belonging to them. It uses a social institutionalist framework to analyse how family dynamics gave rise to practices and roles. The kings of Spain only had limited power to control the construction of their dynasty, since births and deaths, processes of dynastic centralisation, pressure from subjects, relatives' individual agency, rivalry among relatives and the institutionalisation of roles limited their power. Including several genealogical tables to support students new to the Spanish Habsburgs, this book is essential reading for all students of early modern Europe and the history of monarchy.
Les villes des Habsbourg du xve au xixe siècle : communication, art et pouvoir dans les réseaux urbains, 2021
M a t r i M o n i a l policy and dynastic coincidences propelled the Habsburg dynasty into the position of a major European power in the last decades of the fifteenth century, in particular as a result of the marriage of Maximilian I with Mary of Burgundy, and later on, the union of Philipp the Handsome with Juana of Castile. The Burgundian and Spanish alliances enhanced the territorial as well as the economic dimensions of the Habsburg dominions in Western Europe and can be seen as the actual starting point of the Habsburg empire. The integration of the Spanish and Burgundian territories, and in particular the Low Countries, put two of the most dynamic economic motors of the sixteenth century at the disposal of the Habsburgs. One was certainly Spain, which through the port of Seville was the bridgehead to the New World. The discovery of the Americas in 1492 and the following conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires bestowed the Habsburg rulers with a new colonial empire with almost unlimited potential, especially because of its huge output of silver. The Low Countries, on the other hand, were an economic center with dynamic cities, urban industries, a vibrant trade and financial markets, which represented an indispensable asset for the valorization of the American colonies 1 .