Coat of Arms of Maximilian I as King of the Romans (c. 1517): Artwork and History

Coat of Arms of Maximilian I as King of the Romans (c. 1517) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as After Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This double-sided book illustration presents the heraldry of the soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Albrecht Dürer’s patron. The chain of stylized flints and firebrands with a dangling sheepskin denotes the Emperor’s membership in the exceedingly prestigious Order of the Golden Fleece, while the central eagles and griffins refer to his various territories. The shield of the author Florian Waldauff appears on the verso, in a woodcut also not by Dürer. Evidently the recto block wore out in the 1500 first edition of the Revelations of Saint Bridget; the 1517 edition replaced Dürer’s very similar design with this entirely new one.

Object facts

• Title: Coat of Arms of Maximilian I as King of the Romans
• Date: c. 1517
• Artist attribution: After Albrecht Dürer German, 1471-1528
• Place of origin: Germany
• Medium: Woodcut in black on ivory laid paper
• Dimensions: Image: 23.3 × 15 cm (9 3/16 × 5 15/16 in.); Sheet: 26.4 × 17.3 cm (10 7/16 × 6 13/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1929.320

Collection credit

Clarence Buckingham Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.