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1. Art & Archives
For the Throne: Medievalists’ Musings on Game of
Thrones
Curators connect medieval art to each episode of the
final season of Game of Thrones
BRYAN C. KEENE AND LARISA
GROLLEMOND | APRIL 11, 2019 | 12 MIN READ
Details of medieval manuscripts from the Getty Museum’s
collection.
Winter is here and all men must die. These dictums reveal
macabre and foreboding wisdom surrounding the upcoming,
final season of HBO’s smash-hit series Game of Thrones,
based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books.

2. As curators of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at the
Getty, we are thrilled to continue our tradition of bringing you
episode recaps on the @gettymuseum Instagram and, here
on The Iris, thematic tie-in posts to each episode using
medieval art from our collection and around the world.
Why Recap Game of Thrones through Art?
Our aim in recapping Game of Thrones episodes with art has
always been to draw connections between the Middle Ages
(roughly 500–1500 in Europe, Africa, and Asia) and the show
by sharing the breadth and depth of our manuscripts
collection, as well as to bring some objects from the collection
to light that otherwise have not been exhibited. (Our
handmade books contain upwards of hundreds of painted
images and decorations, but they are light-sensitive and can
only be physically displayed for short periods of time.)
In the series:

 Awaiting Season 8: Snow, Frost, and Ice
 Episode 1: What do dragons eat, anyway?
 Episode 2: “Which Way Should I Go?” / “Which Way Do
You Want To Go?”
 Episode 3: “What do we say to the god of death? Not today!”
 Episode 4: “What If There’s Someone Else? Someone
Better?”
 Episode 5: “What have I told you? The greater the risk, the
greater the reward?”
 Episode 6: “Why do you think I came all this way?”
Episode 6: “Why do you think I came all this way?”

4. Top Left: Detail of Decorated Incipit Page, about 1120–1140,
Unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Top right: A Dead
Hunter, 1908, Florence Kingsford Cockerell. The J. Paul
Getty Museum. Bottom: View of Koblenz with the Rhine and
Fortress Ehrenbreitstein, 1815, Johann Adam Klein. The J.
Paul Getty Museum.
The pages of illuminated manuscripts provide rare glimpses
into the world of long ago. Handwritten words and painted
scenes on parchment and paper preserve the memories, deeds,
and knowledge of the women and men who came before us.
As curators of medieval art, we are fortunate to work with
these remarkable objects in a collection that spans the 9th
through the early 20th century.
The ruins of the Middle Ages have long inspired nostalgia and
fantasy for the past. The contours of the medieval period—as
a field of study and as a chronological step between antiquity
and the “Renaissance”— were conceived along the
burgeoning nationalistic borders of nineteenth-century
Europe, born out of Revolutions, the “Enlightenment,” and an
Industrial and scientific age. There are obvious problems with
this view of the thousand years that generally demarcate the
Middle Ages (from about 500-1500).
The idea of the Middle Ages, filtered through popular culture
and modern medievalisms, is still very much under
construction. The world of Game of Thrones presents a vision
of medieval fantasy — one that is heavily influenced by the
pervasive, dangerous, and ultimately narrow and outdated
stereotypes of a primarily white, heteronormative, and
cisgender view of western Europe largely disconnected from
the wider world. Yet from this contemporary conception of
the past, we might learn something about ourselves, and

5. perhaps, build a new and better idea of the Middle Ages from
the ashes of the old.
We hope that this “Getty of Thrones” social media series has
expanded our reader’s understanding of this rich, diverse,
interconnected, and multivocal period in history.
Recap of Season 8, Episode 6
Episode 5: “What have I told you? The greater the risk,
the greater the reward?”

7. The Angel Pouring Out from the Seventh Vessel; Unknown;
London (probably), England; about 1255 – 1260; Tempera
colors, gold leaf, colored washes, pen and ink on parchment;
Leaf: 31.9 x 22.5 cm (12 9/16 x 8 7/8 in.); Ms. Ludwig III 1,
fol. 35
Prophecy and prolepsis —a divinely-inspired prediction of
future events and the anticipation of something to come —are
important themes in medieval art and throughout the Game of
Thrones series. For the latter, we have seen Cersei’s children
wear golden crowns and golden shrouds, and she was recently
crushed alongside her twin brother, Jaime, who put his arms
around her in their final moments (thus fulfilling the Valonqar
prophecy); the Dragon Queen too has heard many prophecies,
the weight of which will likely play out in the final episode.
The Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament contain
significant prophetic writings by the so-called former and
latter prophets of the Nevi’im and the major and minor
prophets, respectively. Jeremiah’s prophecy about the
destruction of Jerusalem by fire, for example, appeared
frequently in illuminated copies of the Bible and in
manuscripts of history and chronicle. The Book of Job, part of
the Ketuvim (or “Writings”) in Judaism or the poetic writings
in Christianity, begins with a harrowing account of the
prophet’s losses, including the total destruction of his home
town, as “the fire of God fell from the heavens” and burned
everything in its path (Job 1:16).
One of the most enigmatic and immensely popular prophetic
texts is the Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, the last
book of the Christian Bible that describes the end of time
leading to the Second Coming of Christ. This type of
manuscript would be perfectly suited for Brandon Stark, as we

8. predicted in season 4. The artist of a thirteenth-century
English copy of the writings conceived the narratives as
rectangular spaces framed with green, white, and red colored
washes, and situated the writer Saint John the Divine
alternatively within or beyond the enclosure of the scene,
creating a window onto the spiritual encounters. Several
sequences of esoteric signs serve as harbingers of ultimate
destruction: the four horsemen represent war, famine,
pestilence, and death; the blast of seven trumpets spells the
demise of all those who live on the earth, who will
be scorched by flames, pumulted by hail, consumed by
locusts, and tortured by demons. Horrific beasts — including
ferocious dragons (one featuring many heads) — reign fire
and brimstone upon all things. None but the righteous can
escape the carnage and onslaught of chaos.
One episode left but so many strands remain unresolved…
Recap of Season 8, Episode 5
Episode 4: “What If There’s Someone Else? Someone
Better?”

9. Initial I: Scenes of Secular and Ecclesiastical Justice, about
1170 – 1180, Unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum.

10. The claim to the Iron Throne and the chaos that ensues in
one’s pursuit of this seat of absolute power dominates the plot
of Game of Thrones. Throughout the series, counselors and
advisors make prognostications about the virtues and vices of
rulers of the past, present, and future. When multiple
individuals have compelling claims to power, we might
follow Sansa in asking, “What if there’s someone else?
Someone better?” The political intrigue sparked by these
seemingly simple questions will no doubt spread and consume
all those witnessing the proverbial game of thrones.
Shifting our focus to medieval Europe, power structures
involved royal and princely courts, the Church, universities,
guilds, civic councils and governing assemblies. Leaders were
expected to balance justice, a virtue associated with godly
rule, and tyranny, a vice that ensured downfall and chaos.
Social hierarchies at the time can be glimpsed through works
of art, which were often created for elite individuals and
therefore reveal the tenuous place of women (some of whom
held positions of authority), the poor, and people perceived as
foreign or other. Manuscripts, in particular, preserve several
examples of images of good and bad government that reveal
the constant struggle between base human instincts and loftier
ideals. One message consistently communicated through the
pages of books (of faith, law, history, and romance) is that
tyranny is unsustainable.
Recap of Season 8, Episode 4
Episode 3: “What do we say to the god of death? Not
today!”

11. Details from Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort,
avtant elegammet pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées,
1547, Hans Holbein. The Getty Research Institute.
Death comes for us all. A grim thought, perhaps, but a
reminder that we all must look this truth in the face. In the
Manuscripts Department, we have often reflected on the
theme of death in medieval art — through exhibitions and in
the range of deathly imagery in the collection — and we have
shared our own ruminations about the art of death and dying
in an Iris post. The medieval world, like our own, was one of
violent military encounters, horrifying pestilences, and a
religious tradition whose visual imagery centered on

12. crucifixion or saintly torture, and thus the devout prepared
their minds, bodies, and souls daily for death’s cruel sting.
The genre of the “Dance of Death,” or danse macabre, was
well known in text, image, and performance of the late Middle
Ages. This tradition offered a simple, but powerful, message
about the equalizing power of death: no matter what one’s
earthly station was (from kings to commoners alike), death
comes for us all. Images of the Dance of Death often feature
animate skeletons delicately taking the hands of their victims,
sweeping them up (many unwillingly) as in a waltz or at times
violently dragging them away. The corpse-like
personifications of Death were intended to shock viewers to
deliver the message in a visceral way, warning people to live a
faithful, pious life in order to ensure a passage into Heaven.
Perhaps the most famous treatment of the danse macabre is
the series by Hans Holbein (1497-1543) called Les
simulachres et histoirees faces de la mort, seen in full here. In
addition to his treatment of around forty scenes in which
individuals encounter death, Holbein also designed an
alphabet of death, a further reminder of death’s presence even
in the very words we write.
The armies of the the Dead are defeated for now, but all of our
favorite characters will eventually tangle with the god of
Death. Valar morghulis (All men must die).
Recap of Season 8, Episode 3
Episode 2: “Which Way Should I Go?” / “Which Way Do
You Want To Go?”

14. Saint Joan of Arc by Jean Pichore in Antoine Dufour’s The
Lives of Famous Women, Paris, about 1504-1506. Nantes,
Musée Thomas Dobrée, Ms. 17, fol. 76v. Source: Wikimedia
Female leadership and power were on full display: Sansa
Stark’s capability as the Lady of Winterfell, Daenerys taking
charge in her typical authoritative way, Lady Mormont
insisting on joining the fight, Arya designing a formidable
weapon for battle and demonstrating her prowess with the
blade, and even a young Winterfell girl eager to protect her
own. But we also saw women’s power called into question:
what is the role of women on the battlefield, as Brienne
becomes a full-fledged knight? How might we come to terms
with the idea that Daenerys’s claim to the Iron Throne—
which she has doggedly pursued as a singular goal since
Season 1—might be in jeopardy simply due to the existence
of a male heir?
The question of the status of women in the Middle Ages was
similarly negotiable, contested, and never quite settled. There
are numerous examples of royal and noble women who
transcended the traditional boundaries set for their gender and
ruled either on their own, or, as was more often the case, in
the stead of a male relative (a son or a husband): Eleanor of
Aquitaine (1122-1204), Blanche of Castile (1188-1252),
Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482), Isabella d’Este (1474-1539)
(among many others) each made names for themselves for
their strong and capable leadership. Even in these cases,
however, the rule of a woman was sometimes seen as
problematic, going against the status quo. In France, women
were even prevented by law from succeeding to the throne
without a husband, and in many other cases, women were

15. only allowed to rule other territories as widows, a political
position that allowed them far more freedom. Male claims to
titles and lands almost always held more sway—a practice
about which Daenerys might have a few opinions.
We have far fewer examples of female knights from the
Middle Ages—in Game of Thrones, Ser Brienne of Tarth is
truly a pathbreaking figure in this regard. One of the most
famous and controversial figures in French history is Joan of
Arc (1412-1431), a peasant girl who aided the French against
the English at a decisive moment of the Hundred Years’ War,
but later still faced a trial on charges of witchcraft, heresy, and
dressing like a man. She was executed at the age of 19 for her
troubles.
Women trying to lead in the Middle Ages faced an uphill
battle, despite their strong wills. We might turn to young Lady
Mormont’s determined assertion to take part in the travails to
come as an example for the modern age. After all, who run the
world?
Recap of Season 8, Episode 2
Episode 1: What do dragons eat, anyway?

16. Initial S: A Griffin and Rider, about 1240–1250, Unknown.
The J. Paul Getty Museum.

17. Sansa’s suspicious curiosity about the culinary preferences of
Daenerys’s dragons can in part be answered by the medieval
bestiary, a kind of encyclopedia of animals and most popular
source for animal lore in the Middle Ages.
Though it doesn’t specify a particular diet, the bestiary says
that the dragon is a fearsome beast, the king of serpents that
carries all its strength in its tail and can snare any other
animal. It fears the shadow of the peridexion tree, where
doves safely roost. The dragon lies in wait for the doves to
leave the tree’s safety, and when they do, the dragon is able to
catch them.
To a Christian reader, this tale was seen as symbolic: the
peridexion tree represented the church, which offers assured
safety to its believers, the doves, and the dragon symbolized
the devil, always on the hunt for the faithful who had left their
safe haven. Daenerys’s later comment that the dragons don’t
like the North may also ring true with the bestiary legend,
which locates them in the warmer climes of Ethiopia and
India (geography from a medieval European perspective
was…well, flexible and shifting). The dragon’s legend made
it an attractive subject for medieval artists, and it appears
everywhere in medieval manuscripts from marginalia to
decorated initials.
The bestiary also says that the dragon is the natural enemy of
the elephant, a creature we also heard a bit about in the first
episode (writers of medieval-inspired fantasy love elephants,
from J.R.R. Tolkien to George R.R. Martin). Elephants
usually appear in bestiaries outfitted with howdahs, a kind of
fortified castle that could carry soldiers into war—highly
useful for queens like Cersei. And just for the record and to
contradict the commander of the Golden Company, elephants

18. did make sea voyages in the Middle Ages! The Getty
collection includes an image of the ancient general Hannibal
of Carthage (237 – about 183/181 BCE) transporting
elephants by ship.
Recap of Season 8, Episode 1
Awaiting Season 8: Snow, Frost, and Ice

19. Gathering Twigs from a Book of Hours, about 1550, Simon
Bening. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 50 (93.MS.19),
verso. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content
Program
With the final season set to begin April 14, 2019, we’re
excited to start exercising our recapping muscles again soon—
even as one of the challenges we will face is a dearth of
imagery needed for this coming season. Over the last several
seasons, we’ve mined the Getty’s manuscripts collection and
the holdings of many other libraries and museums, and yet we
find ourselves conspicuously short on winter-themed images,
specifically scenes of snow, frost, and ice. Certainly medieval
Europeans were familiar with snowy and icy winters—so why
do we find so few images of these conditions in medieval
manuscripts?
One explanation might lie in the common medieval belief in
the balance of humors within the body. In this theory, humors
existed as four different bodily liquids: blood, yellow bile,
black bile, and phlegm, which were each associated with
fundamental elements (air, fire, earth, and water) and
particular seasons (spring, summer, autumn, and winter). It
was believed that, during each season, too much of its
corresponding humor existed within the body and needed to
be balanced out for overall health.
The humor associated with the winter season was phlegm,
which was thought to be evened out through a diet of red wine
and hot meats (perfect for Cersei Lannister). Viewing images
of people warming themselves by the fire, feasting indoors, or
baking bread were also thought to balance the feelings of cold

20. in winter months. The fifteenth-century Italian humanist
Marsilio Ficino advocated the viewing of greenery as a way to
counter a melancholy (or dark and cold) temperament—the
broody-moody medieval personality type. It may be that there
are so few images of winter in medieval art because people
thought that seeing too much snow would create added
phlegm in their bodies, thereby unbalancing their humors.
Medieval calendars sometimes provide glimpses of winter and
the warming activities just mentioned, but not in the total-
earth-covering-frost-of-death that we anticipate will come in
the final season of GoT. Nonetheless, we’ve gathered a
selection of images of winter from the pages of manuscripts to
the walls of palaces and churches, and even assembled some
depictions of Hell itself (to see what we mean, re-read
Dante’s Inferno and skip to the Ninth Circle—that of
Treachery). We’ll share these wintery scenes throughout the
season as we muse on the previous day’s episodes on this blog
post, which will grow as the season continues, and on
the @gettymuseum Instagram every Monday morning from
April 15 to May 20, 2019.
We hope that the images we share each week pique your
interest, expand your view of medieval history, and spark
your imagination.
_______
If you’re in Los Angeles and want to connect with medieval
manuscripts in real life, be sure to visit the Getty Center to see
two timely exhibitions: The Wondrous Cosmos in Medieval

21. Manuscripts (April 30–July 28, 2019) and Book of Beasts:
The Bestiary in the Medieval World (May 14–August
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