The Kassel Willehalm Codex and the Landgraves of Hesse
in the Early Fourteenth Century

College Art Association
Monographs on the Fine Arts
Volume LIV [54]

Author: Joan A. Holladay is an associate professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas.
Editor:Robert S. Nelson
Publisher/Date: University of Washington Press (1997, 1st printing) This book is out-of-print.

Format/Condition: New, unread, oversized hardcover and dust jacket are in fine condition. Measures 9×11 inches; 246 pages including appendixes, bibliography and index. Frontispiece in color; b/w illustrations.

Description: Illuminated for Heinrich II of Hesse in 1334, the Kassel Willehalm Codex differs from other secular manuscripts of the Gothic period by its lavish illumination cycle and the firm identification of its patron and date of execution. In order to understand the meaning this manuscript held for its patron and the role of the codex in his Kunstpoiitik, Joan A. Holladay examines the ways in which the illuminations interpret the text they accompany and places the codex in the larger contexts of the family’s commissions and the patron’s political actions and ambitions.

The identified patron allows this manuscript to be set against the family’s commissions of the two previous generations in a way that broadly illuminates artistic practice and purpose at small courts in the later Middle Ages. Students and scholars of Gothic art as well as specialists in medieval German literature will find new and stimulating material in this volume.