Der Eid als identitätsstiftendes Motiv in der europäischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts

Swearing is an important part of social structures. This work is the first to offer a broad and systematic examination of the oath motif in European painting of the early modern period and thus provides an overdue fundamental work. The oath motif is firmly anchored in people's collective memory. The work examines its design and its pictorial function in terms of content. The focus is on the functional change from the assertoric to the promissory oath, in which the legal use of the gesture is no longer the focus of the image, but rather the socio-political intention of the oath, including a legal, political and socio-historical analysis of the periods in which it was created.