Getty Museum

Chronicle of the Hohenzollern Family

Date

about 1572

Medium

Pen and ink, colored washes, tempera, and gold paint

Culture

German

Department

Manuscripts

Institution

Getty Museum

Deviating from traditional religious texts, this chronicle is a historical manuscript that documents the lineage, achievements, and key events, and, in this context, documents pertaining to the Hohenzollern family of Augsburg. It provides a sequential narrative of the family’s history, highlighting important ancestors, alliances, and territorial gains that contributed to the Hohenzollerns’ rising influence in German and wider European politics. As a chronicle, it serves both as a record of the family’s legacy and as a statement of their prestige, carefully crafted here to emphasize their significance within sixteenth-century German society. The artist Jörg Ziegler’s skilled use of color and gold imbues the manuscript with an aura of grandeur. Repetitive images of named historical and contemporaneous male figures related to the family, all set within archways supported by columns beside colorful heraldic shields, gives a sense of the family’s ancient bloodline, continued importance, military dominance, and wealth. At the same time, the images underscore a medieval and early modern patriarchal view of familial lineage, as no women are included within the image cycle.

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