ABSTRACT
This chapter examines European 'stepfamily retrospective' across some centuries by using case studies to place the stepfamily images featured across the collection in context and to engage with the variety of ways families wished themselves to be seen across a whole range of media. Stepfamilies experienced further moments–potentially disruptive or healing–when a parent died and a new step-parent arrived, perhaps followed by more children. Images of stepfamilies such as the Kanis triptych, the Granberg epitaph or Edvarod-Parramore funerary brass reveal families changing over time. In visual culture as in social history, we need to look beyond widowhood to representations of blended families consisting of parents, step-parents, children, stepchildren, stepsiblings or half-siblings. Some visual representations of stepfamilies illustrate further ways to show continuity between one phase of family life and the next. Visual sources in the medieval to early modern period that displayed dynastic ties and social alliances among the elite seamlessly portrayed the dead among the living.
