An exploration of the interaction between art and politics in early modern Germany, this work focuses on art, political in content, produced by the Augsburg artist Jorg Breu the Elder during the second and third decodes of the sixteenth century. The book argues for the function of the art as fashioning political identities. The artist Jorg Breu is first introduced. His work for the city of Augsburg and for Habsburg and Wittelsbach rulers are examined. These works are placed within their historical context and analyzed according to how they articulate themes of warfare, ceremony, and history...

Warfare, and the circumstances surrounding it, have often provided important impulses for cultural production. This book explores the relationship between warfare and image-making in the early modern period. Rather than dealing with images simply as reproductions of actual events, the volume demonstrates complex processes by which political, national and social identities are negotiated and fashioned in warfare imagery.
The book analyses three main issues: the impact of war on art, the ways in which warfare imagery supports dominant ideologies, and the manner in which such imagery also...