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German MS. 2 is a previously unstudied armorial dating from the mid-sixteenth century. This article shows that it was produced in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger for Elector August of Saxony, and that it was copied from an earlier armorial of c.1500 which was kept in Cranach’s workshop, probably as reference material. Much of the original content and structure of this ‘old armorial’ has been preserved in Rylands German 2. On this basis, the original armorial can be located in a late fifteenth-century Upper German tradition of armorial manuscripts known as the ‘Bodensee’ group. It was also closely linked to the Habsburg dynasty, and appears to have been dedicated to Empress Bianca Maria Sforza. The armorial therefore opens significant new perspectives on the relationships between artists and heraldry and between women and heraldic knowledge, and on ways of visualising the Holy Roman Empire through heraldry.
Judging from repetitious appearances of her marital arms in the painted line-endings, the Psalter-Hours John Rylands Library Latin MS 117 probably belonged to Jeanne of Flanders (c.1272–1333), daughter of Count Robert III of Flanders and in 1288 second wife to Enguerrand IV of Coucy. Yet the line-endings also contain some 1,800 diminutive painted escutcheons, many of which refer to other members of the local nobility active during the 1280s. This study, based on an exhaustive survey of the total heraldic and codicological evidence, suggests that the majority of the extant Psalter predated the Hours and that the two parts were combined after the 1288 marriage. The ‘completed’ manuscript bears witness to major events that unfolded in and around the Coucy barony over the course of the decade. It suggests a complex relationship between Jeanne of Flanders and a lesser member of the local nobility, a certain Marien of Moÿ, who may have served as her attendant.
Conclusion Genealogy, heraldry and the descent of manors remained staples of local history long after they had lost their centrality to the self-identity of local historians and their readers. The Elizabethan and early Stuart gentry saw themselves as socially differentiated, but not divorced, from the remainder of the population. They produced works that reflected their own perspective on the world. It was a wider perspective than their medieval ancestors had enjoyed, incorporating a new world across the Atlantic, but still recognisable. An invisible thread joined the
heraldry, which drew in turn on bestiary traditions regarding parrots and other bird mimics, and that Humphrey and his readers would have recognised that they bore problematic family and household significance. This example of Humphrey’s practice gives us an insight into the special and particular communicative and identity-forming functions that literary imitation enabled. It
, all within a bordure engrailed ermine ’. 18 Comparison of this with heraldry relating to the family in heraldic rolls suggests that the artist was a scion of a branch of the Siferwas family established in Buckinghamshire and Hampshire. 19 In 1380 Siferwas appears in the register of William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester when, as a Dominican friar in their convent at Guildford, he
castle. He appears to have been the owner of a royal pedigree from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth I, which may have been his own compilation. In 1606 Kemys took notes on the heraldry to be found in thirteen churches in the vicinity of his home and in the parlour of the manor house at Codrington. The 85 ‘No historie so meete’ following year he incorporated these into a ‘Collectione of some Antiquitie of the County of Gloucester with the Armes of Sonderye knightes, esquires and Gentlemen of the said County collected in the year of our Lorde 1607. parte out of A
. 7.4 Graffiti, curses, sigils and heraldry Monica Soare writes of graffiti’s role as a Gothic signifier in Bernard Rose’s horror film Candyman (1992). Helen Lyle, played by Virginia Madsen, collects graffiti: Helen’s Gothic involvement in landscape is through her fascination with the ornate graffiti
developed a wider interest in heraldry. Even where a herald produced the pedigree, this does not mean that the members of the family employing him did not take an active interest in the research. Two versions of the Finch family pedigree, drawn up by John Philipot around 1620, survive to this day. The pedigree is a less-elaborate version of the type of ‘Lives’ written by Smyth and Shirley and includes copies of documents, inscriptions and other primary source material. The original was apparently prepared for Sir Thomas Finch, while a copy was made for his younger brother