Aurea condet saecula (per arva Saturno quondam). Imperial Habsburg Medals from the coronation of Frederick III (1452) until the succession of Maximilian I (1494): Art and legitimacy between feudalism and absolutism

Some of the most important early Renaissance medals were made in the fifteenth century for the Habsburg Emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I. Nevertheless, the origins of these medals are obscure and the scholar must search for information on them in a variety of disjunct sources. The diverse nationalities of the artists who made them have hindered the representation of the Imperial Habsburg Medals as a group and a monographic study is needed. This dissertation seeks to remedy the situation by providing a detailed formal and iconographic analysis of the portrait and commemorative medals made in the fifteenth century for Habsburg Emperors, from the imperial coronation of Frederick III in 1452 to the succession of Maximilian I in 1494.;An international group of artists made medals for the Habsburgs under very diverse conditions throughout the second half of the fifteenth century. Each medal, however, served a similar purpose: to function as a durable, portable gift that memorializes a person's passing identity, a relationship between people, a moment in time, or all of these---"to continue...friendship after death and sustain it in lasting human memory," as Robert Briconnet portrayed the medal given him by Giovanni Candida.;The main text of this dissertation combines aesthetic considerations with close readings of the documentation and the results of studies in a range of historical sciences to establish a more precise iconography, chronology, geography, and stylistic morphology of the Imperial Habsburg Medals . It provides the historian with a number of useful case studies in which medals play a role in the reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire as a confederation of unions. A catalogue raisonne presents every known specimen of each medal in order to get a clearer picture of the manufacture, dissemination, and reception of each medal type, with complete bibliographies and a systematic representation of the technical data available for each specimen.;The catalogue and text combine to provide the connoisseur and scholar a useful tool with which to study the Imperial Habsburg Medals of the fifteenth century and the reception of the classical Renaissance style in Northern Europe.