La heráldica profesional o la formulación de un nuevo imaginario emblemático y heráldico

Abstract

Since the dawn of mediaeval times, numerous emblems have been used to identify the professional activities carried out by craft and trade people, in general, throughout the length and breadth of the European continent. Many of those symbols, repeatedly and conventionally used and invoked, were soon used to identify the actual guilds that all corporations joined in order to better defend their corporate interests, and even coining an emblematic image that, crossing borders, would acquire singularity and personality within heraldic art. Throughout our work, our aim is to address that curious and complex reality of guild or professional emblems throughout the centuries, providing solid bases for a comparative analysis that will later enable us to study, from a new perspective, the figurative heraldic range that continues to be present in the companies of our time.