[Paper:] Ambiguous Arms – Difficulties of Reading and Interpreting Heraldic Programmes in Medieval Austrian Wall Paintings (Andreas Zajic)

Great Hall with armorial frieze in the so-called Gozzoburg in Krems (View to the Hoher Markt)

The paper focusses on the problem of a sound interpretation of the puzzling late 13th century armorial paintings in the Great Hall of the so-called Gozzoburg in Krems (Lower Austria) and contrasts them to less enigmatic heraldic programmes featured in other Austrian castles, visualising aristocratic kinship bonds, ties of fealty or more complex relations between noble patrons and their clients.

Andreas Zajic heads the Division of Text Edition and Source Studies at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and teaches Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna. He is member of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. His research topics include – alongside epigraphy, diplomatic, paleography and heraldry – late medieval monastic studies, history of nobility and the reception of humanism at the court of Maximilian I.

The paper will be given at the international workshop: Heraldry in Medieval and Early Modern State-Rooms: Towards a Typology of Heraldic Programmes in Spaces of Self-Representation – Münster, Germany, 16-18 March 2016