The Renaissance triumph & tournament – Vol. 1

The reign of Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519) represents a decisive moment in the history of courtly representation in the Holy Roman Empire. No ruler of the German lands invested more systematically in visual and textual self-fashioning than Maximilian, who conceived an ambitious corpus of manuscripts and printed books devoted to triumphs, tournaments, genealogy, and chivalric virtue. These works—situated between manuscript culture and the age of print—combined historiography, autobiography, and political propaganda. Their influence extended well beyond Maximilian’s lifetime, shaping noble tournament books and triumphal imagery throughout the sixteenth century. This essay examines the principal German manuscripts and manuscript-based projects of the sixteenth century that address triumphal processions and tournaments, with particular emphasis on works associated with Hans Burgkmair, Jeremia Schemel, and their contemporaries. It also provides a structured catalogue of the most important examples, intended as a reference file for further research.