“Court dwarves” and court artists as actors at late medieval and early modern courts

With 'court dwarves' and court artists at the courts of the 15th-17th centuries, this project for the first time takes a fundamental look at those elites at court whose spheres of influence were wrongly categorised as marginal. For it was only superficially that these actors were structurally on the periphery; rather, ruler together with these two instances formed a semiotic triangle: the power embodied by the rule could be shaped, affirmed, idealized or criticized by the artist in the subject of the court dwarf. The subproject analyses how the categories of the court dwarf, staged and transported by the artist in various artefacts, can be defined more precisely and how they can be reconciled on the basis of court payroll books, dress codes, medical tracts or artist correspondence. The transculturality and gender parity of the topic promises a variety of connections to other projects of the center.