In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, German clockwork
automata were collected, displayed, and given as gifts throughout
the Holy Roman, Ottoman, and Mughal Empires. In Animating Empire,
Jessica Keating recounts the lost history of six such objects and
reveals the religious, social, and political meaning they held. The
intricate gilt, silver, enameled, and bejeweled clockwork automata,
almost exclusively crafted in the city of Augsburg, represented a
variety of subjects in motion, from religious figures to animals.
Their movements were driven by gears, wheels, and springs
painstakingly assembled by clockmakers. Typically wound up and
activated by someone in a position of power, these objects and the
theological and political arguments they made were highly valued by
German-speaking nobility. They were often given as gifts and as
tribute payment, and they played remarkable roles in the Holy Roman
Empire, particularly with regard to courtly notions about the
important early modern issues of universal Christian monarchy, the
Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the encroachment of the
Ottoman Empire, and global trade. Demonstrating how automata
produced in the Holy Roman Empire spoke to a convergence of
historical, religious, and political circumstances, Animating
Empire is a fascinating analysis of the animation of inanimate
matter in the early modern period. It will appeal especially to art
historians and historians of early modern Europe. E-book editions
have been made possible through support of the Art History
Publication Initiative (AHPI), a collaborative grant from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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