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Tombs of Kinship is a study of one monumental tomb type in Northern
Europe, traced from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries.
This is the first extensive treatment that recognizes the kinship
tomb for what it is, rather than compounding it with its celebrated
counterpart, the ceremonial tomb, where the final rites or funeral
procession of the deceased are represented. The unique characteristic
of a tomb of kinship is that it includes a figurative representation
of a family tree.
This book establishes the kinship tomb as an important Northern
European iconographical type, equal in interest to the ceremonial
tomb as a manifestation of the mentality of the late Middle Ages.
It traces the development of the type from its inception in France
and diffusion in the Low Countries and England until its vulgarization
in prefabricated tombstones and alabaster tombs in the fifteenth
century. The study demonstrates that after being imported into England
in the late thirteenth century, the kinship tomb became a vehicle
for Edward III's assertion of his claim to the French throne and,
inspired by the king and court, the preferred type of the fourteenth-century
English baron. Limited to the princes and knights and their ladies
in the thirteenth century, the tomb was adopted by the minor gentry
and the middle class by the late fourteenth century, with a corresponding
change from an extended family program to one confined to the nuclear
family.
Gothic Tombs of Kinship identifies a representative number
of kinship tombs from the period and the territories that marked
their apogee, deciphers their programs, and places them in their
cultural context.
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