Emperor Sigismund

In September 1423 Sigismund, then king of the Romans and later Holy Roman Emperor, handed the imperial regalia to Nuremberg for safekeeping, for eternal times and without recall. The crown, the swords and the vestments reached the city in March 1424. After that they were shown to the crowd once a year, on the second Friday after Easter, and the night before each showing they were shut into a recess in a house on the main market square. Around 1512 the city council had Dürer paint two tall panels for that recess, hinged so they could be turned shut over it. Sigismund is one of them. Charlemagne, the emperor at the far end of the story, is the other. Closed, they showed coats of arms and inscriptions. Open, they showed the two emperors. Sigismund had been dead about 75 years by then, so Dürer worked from an older likeness rather than from memory of a face. The yearly showing stopped in 1524 as the Reformation took hold in Nuremberg, and two years later the panels were carried into the town hall.