The body recast and revived

By the end of the twelfth century, the practice of memorializing the dead through funerary sculpture had become widespread across Europe. The tomb effigy, in which the body of the deceased was depicted in a full-figure relief on a rectangular slab laid over the grave, would eventually become the most coveted form of burial for elite members of late medieval and early modern society. Today a rich array of such effigies survives from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, forming a focal point for the modern study of Gothic and Renaissance sculpture. Yet despite the importance of these works to both the commemoration of the dead in medieval society and to contemporary scholarship, to date, no sustained research has been conducted on the effigies of the eleventh through early twelfth centuries. While some of these first examples have been presented in catalogue entries and monographic articles, this dissertation is the first project to address effigies from the period 1080-1160 as a coherent genre of monumental sculpture, and to assert that these objects are distinct from their Gothic and Renaissance counterparts not only in form, but also in function. Beyond merely filling a lacuna in our knowledge of European sculpture, this study situates early effigies within the larger discourse that has emerged in contemporary scholarship on the body. Moving systematically through a series of case studies, and centered on the unique proliferation of effigies in the twelfth-century Holy Roman Empire, each chapter asserts that Romanesque effigies were not created for the wealthiest or most powerful members of medieval society, but rather for individuals whose lives and deaths were both problematic and exemplary in the eyes of their local communities. These sculptures compensate for loss, defeat, and untimely death, reassuring audiences that worldly sacrifice would be redeemed through heavenly redemption and eschatological resurrection. These effigies are not personal commissions to ensure individual salvation; they are public monuments with communal goals. Within this framework, this dissertation presents the twelfth-century rise of the medieval tomb effigy as a defining, formative moment in the larger history of representations of the human figure in Western art.