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Chassica Kirchhoff, an art historian and curator, has published a book titled "The Thun-Hohenstein Album" which focuses on the study of the second volume of the Thun-Hohenstein albums. These albums consist of drawings of armours and armoured figures from the early 17th century. The book explores the origins, references, and authors of the drawings, as well as the artistic, social, and political contexts in which they were produced. Kirchhoff argues that these drawings were not just technical sketches, but rather tokens of a memorial culture that conveyed symbolic significance. The book is divided into five chapters that analyze different aspects of the album, including plate armour in Augsburg, late medieval martial arts' visual culture, and the commemorative aspect of the drawings related to tournaments. The book also examines specific drawings that celebrate the memories of Maximilian I and Charles V, as well as the Augsburger artistic and intellectual society. Overall, the book offers a unique perspective on the cultural significance of arms and armours beyond their military purposes. [Extracted from the article]

The Royal Armouries of Leeds preserves a rare example of an early fifteenth century German tournament high saddle that is also one of the earliest complete western medieval saddles preserved. It bears witness to an extreme form of tournament which stood very far from the real practice of war: the Hohenzeuggestech. Impact marks of lances and swords, visible on the saddle, reveal the violence of the blows exchanged during these meetings, a violence often hard to observe in the contemporary but conventional representations of jousters and tourneyers. Thus, by the means of its excellent state of preservation, the Leeds high saddle sheds some light on the jousts and tourneys on high saddles, once so popular and plentiful in what remains of the civilian iconography of the late fourteenth- and the fifteenth-century Germanic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]