- United States
Chassica Kirchhoff
Detroit Institute of Arts, European Art, Department Member
- Arms and Armor Studies, Tournament Books, German Renaissance Art, Holy Roman Empire, Print Culture, Manuscript Illustration, and 25 moreManuscripts and Early Printed Books, Art History, Chivalric Arts, History, Semiotics, History of Art, Kaiser Maximilian I., Arms and Armour, Medieval Tournaments, Medieval Military History, Late Medieval History, 15th Century Burgundy, 16th Century Prints and Drawings, late medieval and early modern history of European nobility and courts, Medieval metalwork, Early Modern Europe, Habsburg Studies, Renaissance Studies, Chivalry (Medieval Studies), History and Memory, Social and Collective Memory, History of European Martial Arts, Provenance, History of Collecting, and Early Modern Intellectual Historyedit
- An art historian specializing in the history, meaning, and representation of European armor and the roles of martial ... moreAn art historian specializing in the history, meaning, and representation of European armor and the roles of martial material culture within the visual and intellectual landscapes of the late medieval & early modern periods. My intermedial and interdisciplinary scholarship intersects with wide-ranging research, teaching, and curatorial experience.edit
In 2019, the Detroit Institute of Arts was awarded a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to renovate one of the museum’s European sculpture and decorative arts storage facilities.... more
In 2019, the Detroit Institute of Arts was awarded a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to renovate one of the museum’s European sculpture and decorative arts storage facilities. Integrally, it also offered an opportunity to examine an understudied group of armors, previously in the William Randolph Hearst collection. The case study on which this article focuses illuminates the authors’ work undressing and dismembering one of these wood and metal bodies: a composite Maximilian-style armor (56.124.1-.10).
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Near the end of the 1500s, smiths in the south German city of Augsburg forged a group of ornate armors in the so-called Hungarian style meant for prominent commanders in both the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires. Attributable to the circle... more
Near the end of the 1500s, smiths in the south German city of Augsburg forged a group of ornate armors in the so-called Hungarian style meant for prominent commanders in both the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires. Attributable to the circle of Anton Peffenhauser (ca. 1525–1603)—among the last in Augsburg’s lineage of illustrious armorers—the armors’ articulated breastplates and, in some cases, distinctive Zischägge (lobster tail) helmets echo flexible defenses worn by Hussars, Central European cavalry whose nimble tactics and flamboyant dress inspired both the Ottoman elite and the Habsburg courts. The particularized forms of these armors articulated the multivalent identities of their wearers, while their virtuosic construction and sumptuous, etched-and-gilt decoration bear the stylistic hallmarks of Augsburg’s erudite network of armorers and etchers. Through their associations with war, pageantry, and the economy of gifts exchanged between Vienna and Constantinople, these armors embodied the complex visual and cultural landscapes of east-central Europe for early modern wearers and viewers.
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Since 1923, the Detroit Institute of Arts has been home to a Thüringian Marian altarpiece. Despite its significant art-historical interest, the work remained in museum storage for decades, awaiting restoration. Now, funding from the... more
Since 1923, the Detroit Institute of Arts has been home to a Thüringian Marian altarpiece. Despite its significant art-historical interest, the work remained in museum storage for decades, awaiting restoration. Now, funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation has made preliminary analysis and important preservation possible in preparation for comprehensive restoration. This article, co-written with conservators Becca Goodman and Ellen Hanspach-Bernal, is intended to introduce this "lost" altarpiece to the scholarly community and expand the known corpus of Thüringian painted and carved altarpieces.
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This article examines a lineage of retrospective images that portray Maximilian I as armored Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, riding a horse that is clad in impressive plate armor from its head to its hooves. These artworks,... more
This article examines a lineage of retrospective images that portray Maximilian I as armored Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, riding a horse that is clad in impressive plate armor from its head to its hooves. These artworks, which span the sixteenth century, participate in the early modern cultures of remembrance that surround Maximilian’s knightly persona and posthumous mythos. The central image of the study is a drawing, created during the 1540s, that is bound into the so-called Thun-Hohenstein Album. This drawing synthesizes two earlier paintings, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, that represent triumphal entries into the cities of Namur and Luxembourg in 1480. A later image, created in Augsburg around 1575, exactly parallels the drawing in the Thun album, which it may copy. Careful consideration of these images, their meanings and their different contexts of creation and reception, as well as the equine armor that they depict, demonstrates the persistent significance of armor in the early modern cultures of remembrance of the Holy Roman Empire.
Link to full-text, open-access article: https://memo.imareal.sbg.ac.at/wsarticle/memo/2019-kirchhoff-memories-in-steel-and-paper/
Link to full-text, open-access article: https://memo.imareal.sbg.ac.at/wsarticle/memo/2019-kirchhoff-memories-in-steel-and-paper/
Research Interests: Material Culture Studies, Renaissance Studies, Arms and Armor Studies, Habsburg Studies, Manuscript Studies, and 11 moreSpectacle, Early Modern Europe, Memory Studies, Northern Renaissance Art, Burgundian Low Countries, Arms and Armour, Burgundian Court, Armor, Erinnerungskultur (memory culture), Royal Entries, and Buchmalerei
This article traces the pictorial lineages of images collected in one of the two Thun-Hohenstein albums through comparative analyses of fight books produced in the German-speaking lands, and considers how the representational strategies... more
This article traces the pictorial lineages of images collected in one of the two Thun-Hohenstein albums through comparative analyses of fight books produced in the German-speaking lands, and considers how the representational strategies deployed in martial treatises inflected the ways that book painters and their audiences visualized the armoured body.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Early Modern History, Arms and Armor Studies, Manuscript Studies, Codicology, and 11 moreMemory Studies, History of Art, Early modern Germany, Renaissance Martial Arts (History), History of European Martial Arts, History of Collecting, German Renaissance Art, Collectors and Collecting, Comparative Analysis, Swordsmanship, and Sixteenth Century History
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A brief overview of recent discoveries made during storeroom work at the Detroit Institute of Arts, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. http://icomam.mini.icom.museum/the-magazine/
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A review of Freydal: Medieval Games and other 2019 publications that examine the sumptuous tournament book of Emperor Maximilian I and the constellation of chivalric culture whence it emerged.
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Though well-known as a collector, compiler, and author of fight books, Paulus Hector Mair amassed diverse martial objects. Analysis of his posthumous inventories and sales reveals the objects he owned as artifacts of Augsburg’s martial... more
Though well-known as a collector, compiler, and author of fight books, Paulus Hector Mair amassed diverse martial objects. Analysis of his posthumous inventories and sales reveals the objects he owned as artifacts of Augsburg’s martial culture. https://martcult.hypotheses.org/date/2020/05
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An essay on the interdisciplinary potential of museums inspired by a conversation between sculptor Elizabeth Turk and paleontologist Chris Beard, both MacArthur Fellows. Published in: Joey Orr, ed. inquiries (Lawrence, Spencer Museum of... more
An essay on the interdisciplinary potential of museums inspired by a conversation between sculptor Elizabeth Turk and paleontologist Chris Beard, both MacArthur Fellows. Published in: Joey Orr, ed. inquiries (Lawrence, Spencer Museum of Art, 2019), pp. 150-153. The full text publication is available as a PDF from the museum, here: https://spencerart.ku.edu/books-catalogues-and-brochures
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A short article published by the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM) Magazine, June 2019. http://network.icom.museum/icomam/publications/the-magazine/
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Follow the link on this page to view a ten-minute talk on Andrea Solario's panel painting, Saint George and Saint Sebastian, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The talk describes the image's relationship to the illustrious Milanese... more
Follow the link on this page to view a ten-minute talk on Andrea Solario's panel painting, Saint George and Saint Sebastian, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The talk describes the image's relationship to the illustrious Milanese armor industry and its representation of Solario's eminent French patron.
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An abstract for a talk delivered as part of the 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art Fellows Colloquium "Tracing Objects: Translation and Transmission."... more
An abstract for a talk delivered as part of the 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art Fellows Colloquium "Tracing Objects: Translation and Transmission."
https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-speaks/fellows-colloquia/translation-and-transmission
https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-speaks/fellows-colloquia/translation-and-transmission
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Presented on October 20, 2018, at "Ways of Seeing, Ways of Reading II: The Anthropology and Aesthetics of Arms and Armor," a workshop organized by Columbia University and Paris Sciences et Lettres in collaboration with The Metropolitan... more
Presented on October 20, 2018, at "Ways of Seeing, Ways of Reading II: The Anthropology and Aesthetics of Arms and Armor," a workshop organized by Columbia University and Paris Sciences et Lettres in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
http://classicalstudies.columbia.edu/conference/ways-seeing-ways-reading-ii-anthropology-and-aesthetics-arms-and-armor
http://classicalstudies.columbia.edu/conference/ways-seeing-ways-reading-ii-anthropology-and-aesthetics-arms-and-armor
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An abstract for a paper presented at the University of Lisbon during the 2nd Medieval Culture & War Conference, 22-24 June 2017
Research Interests: Renaissance Studies, Arms and Armor Studies, History and Memory, Habsburg Studies, Manuscript Studies, and 9 moreEarly Modern Europe, Memory Studies, History of Collections, Collecting and Collections, Court Culture, Holy Roman Empire, Arms and Armour, War and Culture, and Historical European Martial Arts
An abstract describing a paper presented at the workshop, “Pictures, Parchment, Paper: illustrated books and manuscripts in early modern Germany,” organized by Katy Bond, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, 5 May 2016 and at... more
An abstract describing a paper presented at the workshop, “Pictures, Parchment, Paper: illustrated books and manuscripts in early modern Germany,” organized by Katy Bond, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, 5 May 2016 and at "Medieval Culture and War: Ideals, Representations, & Realities," organized by Sophie Harwood, Iason-Eleftherios Tzouriadis, and Trevor Russel Smith, University of Leeds, 7 May 2016
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This talk explores how the visual and textual traditions that shaped a set of fifteenth-century drawings inserted into the bound collection of drawings known as the Thun-Hohenstein album imbued the armored bodies they depict with meanings... more
This talk explores how the visual and textual traditions that shaped a set of fifteenth-century drawings inserted into the bound collection of drawings known as the Thun-Hohenstein album imbued the armored bodies they depict with meanings familiar to period viewers, and considers how this confluence of sources helped to establish pictorial strategies that shaped representations and receptions of the armored body. For more, see the attached abstract.
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Abstract for a dissertation-derived paper presented on October 5, 2015 at the Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas, as part of the center's Early Modern Seminar series.
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In Giorgio Vasari’s Christ Carrying the Cross, the three Roman soldiers who torment Christ wear elaborately embossed and gilded helmets, with visors in the form of grotesque masks and monstrous beaks and peaks surmounted with elegant... more
In Giorgio Vasari’s Christ Carrying the Cross, the three Roman soldiers who torment Christ wear elaborately embossed and gilded helmets, with visors in the form of grotesque masks and monstrous beaks and peaks surmounted with elegant crests or flamboyant plumes. These fantastic armaments appear to represent imperial Roman garb as imagined by Vasari, and seem at first to signify an opposition between the battle regalia of the brutish past and the elegant armors worn by renaissance princes during the sixteenth century. However, such imaginative armors were also painted onto the represented bodies of powerful nobles in portraits, allegories, and battle scenes. These images of elaborately-worked helmets and muscled breastplates were derived from from fantastic armors produced during the sixteenth-century in the all’antica, or antique, manner. Also known as armor all’eroica or alla Romana, referring to its associations with mythological and literary heroes as well as with the Roman past, such armaments embodied early modern constructs of masculinity that were transferred onto their painted or sculpted images. This talk explores how the appearance of depicted and actual works of armor intersected and what meanings lie at the center of these intersections.
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Spencer Museum of Art, October 28, 2017 – February 4, 2018. I served as an IMLS-funded exhibition research assistant, conducting research, developing didactic content, presenting programming, and contributing to installation strategies... more
Spencer Museum of Art, October 28, 2017 – February 4, 2018.
I served as an IMLS-funded exhibition research assistant, conducting research, developing didactic content, presenting programming, and contributing to installation strategies for this exhibition, which celebrates the museum's founding gift.
I served as an IMLS-funded exhibition research assistant, conducting research, developing didactic content, presenting programming, and contributing to installation strategies for this exhibition, which celebrates the museum's founding gift.
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Spencer Museum of Art, September 15, 2012 – January 27, 2013. As a curatorial intern, I assisted art historian and guest-curator, Dr. Sally Cornelison, and curator of European and American Art, Dr. Susan Earle, with the realization of... more
Spencer Museum of Art, September 15, 2012 – January 27, 2013. As a curatorial intern, I assisted art historian and guest-curator, Dr. Sally Cornelison, and curator of European and American Art, Dr. Susan Earle, with the realization of this major exhibition, from its inception through its installation and the extensive programming that helped to share it with the Spencer Museum's audiences.
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The installation juxtaposed contemporary objects from the collection with their historic counterparts and with remnants of the process, such as preparatory drawings. In this way, Crafting Continuities engages deeper content found in the... more
The installation juxtaposed contemporary objects from the collection with their historic counterparts and with remnants of the process, such as preparatory drawings. In this way, Crafting Continuities engages deeper content found in the Spencer Museum of Art's contemporary works in craft media, while highlighting the depth of the Museum’s collection of historic artworks in these media.