Jonas Brachmann

• C4: Ceremonies in Print: Intermediality and Representation in Early Modern Netherlandish Culture

Printed Grief. Pompae funebres for the Dutch stadtholders in Early Modern Print

The research project in Art History focuses on the reciprocal relationship between representation and intermediality in 16th and 17th century Netherlandish sepulchral culture. Of particular interest are the pompae funebres for Charles V, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, whose funeral procession took place in Brussel in 1558 and those for William of Orange, Governor of the Netherlands, in Delft 1584. These spatial and temporal bound obsequies were spread in Europe through a series of graphic prints and thus gained a lasting cultural impact due to their visual appropriation of ephemerality. The prints not only represented the political, religious, and social significance of the performative funerary rites, but we argue that they further functioned as ubiquitous places of negotiation for political, societal, and art theoretical discourse through the inherent logic of their medium and material. To examine these works of art, linking image and text, both in terms of reflections of their own mediality as well as their reproduction and creation of Netherlandish aesthetics of mourning, the project will consider in addition to traditional art historical methods and perspectives from reception theory—among others—approaches from Intermedial Studies, Performativity Studies and Ritual Studies.