| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: Despite a number of particular studies, the Renaissance epitaph remains a largely undervalued source. Art historians study it solely as a “work of art,” while historians tend to use it as a source of purely factual data (heraldic, epigraphic, genealogical, prosopographic etc.). However, from the wider, cultural-historical or historical- anthropological perspective, it is necessary for both disciplines to realize the specific value of the epitaph as a sepulchral monument, the goal of which was to construct the identity of the “social body” of the deceased. The specific conceptual character of the epitaph thus offers a possibility to study it as a complex medium (source) reflecting cultural codes of dying, death, remembering and salvation (which is especially interesting in the context of Europe divided by different denominations), but also as a pure phenomenon that took part in forming the death discourse of the period. |
