Dem Menschen nachgebildet

Artificial bodies form a distinctive class of object in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: life-size representations or replicas of the human body served as effigies of rulers or as automaton figures — also known as androids — for a variety of purposes. Within their respective functional contexts these objects have already been studied individually. Manuel Schaub is the first to pursue what such representations and constructions of the body have in common, deliberately setting aside their obvious differences. He focuses on the materials used, the ways the artificial bodies were presented, and how contemporaries and later generations after the end of the eighteenth century perceived them. Viewing effigies and androids together makes it possible to reconstruct how an image of the body developed from the late Middle Ages into the early modern period.