Ulrich Richental’s chronicle of the Council of Constance

As a citizen of Constance, Ulrich Richental was an eyewitness of the Council which took place in the city. He recognised it as a major political event on the world scale and the crowning moment of the city’s history. The Council became the number one revolving stage of European political and cultural life, and Richental’s recorded in his chronicle everything that happened there, also peppering it with very direct observations of everyday life. His original, richly illustrated memoir has now been lost. However, many later copies attest to sustained interest in the Council of Constance, particularly as it affected disputes on church organisation in the 15th century. The pictures in the richly-illustrated New York manuscript are almost certainly based on the original, and are identifiable from their biographical, iconographical and stylistic characteristics as the work of the most significant Upper Rhine painter of the era, Konrad Witz.