The Emperor's halo: An essay on art and law in medieval political iconography
Description:... The portraits of kings that we present in this book allow us to think about the complex relationship between law, religion and sovereign power in the Middle Ages. We seek to answer the question about how medieval artists saw the relationship between king, law and faith and how these works of art helped to build, on the visual plane, the symbolic legitimacy of sovereign power. Following the historical trail of Peterson, Schmitt, Kantorowicz and Agamben, we can observe today the relationship between the body and the acclamation and glorification of the sovereign inscribed in these works of art. They are paintings, frescos and illuminations that constitute the founding political iconography of the image that we have and make of Law and the State. The chronological organization of the images corresponds to Kantorowicz's thesis, according to which the mystical body of the king had first, a Christocentric, then a legal and, finally, a governmental foundation. First, the king as an image of Christ, then, as an image of Law and Justice, and finally, in the early Middle Ages, the king as a government.
Show description