Gothic tombs of kinship in France, the low countries, and England

Establishes the kinship tomb as an important Northern European iconographical type, equal in interest to the ceremonial tomb as a manifestation of the mentality of the late Middle Ages. The text traces the development of the type from its inception in France and diffusion in the Low Countries and England until it vulgarisation in prefabricated tombstones and alabaster tombs in the 15th-century. The study demonstares that after being imported into England in the late 13th century, the kinship tomb became a vehicle for Edward III's assertion of his claim to the French throne and, inspired by the king and court, the preferred type of the 14th century English baron. Limited to the princes and knights and their ladies on the 13th century, the tomb was adopted by the minor gentry and the middle class by the late 14th century, with a corresponding change from an extended family programme to one confined to the nuclear family. The text identifies a representative number of kinship tombs from the period and the territories that marked their apogee, deciphers their programmes, and places them in their cultural context.