The Likeness of the King

by Perkinson, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780226658797
• ISBN10: 0226658791
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Anyone who has strolled through the halls of a museum knows that portraits occupy a central place in the history of art. But did portraits, as such, exist in the medieval era? Stephen Perkinson'sThe Likeness of the Kingchallenges the canonical account of the invention of modern portrait practices, offering a case against the tendency of recent scholarship to identify likenesses of historical personages as "the first modern portraits." Unwilling to accept the anachronistic nature of these claims, Perkinson both resists and complicates grand narratives of portraiture art that ignore historical context. Focusing on the Valois court of France, he argues that local practice prompted shifts in the late medieval understanding of how images could represent individuals and prompted artists and patrons to deploy likeness in a variety of ways. Through an examination of well-known images of the fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century kings of France, as well as largely overlooked objects such as wax votive figures and royal seals, Perkinson demonstrates that the changes evident in these images do not constitute a revolutionary break with the past, but instead were continuous with late medieval representational traditions. "A lively, well-researched, and insightful work of scholarship on late-medieval portraiture and its cultural and intellectual context.The Likeness of the Kingprovides a strong account of late-medieval aesthetics and specific, concrete examples of image-making and the often political needs it served. It offers smart handling of literary, philosophical, and archival sources; close and insightful reading of images; and a willingness to counter received ideas."Rebecca Zorach, University of Chicago

Author Biography

Stephen Perkinson is associate professor of art history at Bowdoin College.

 

 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
introduction Jeban roy de France and the History of Portraiture	p. 1
The Discourse of Likeness in the Late Middle Ages	p. 27
Representing the Royal Body in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries	p. 85
The Vocabulary of Likeness at the Late Fourteenth- Century French Court	p. 135
Likeness, Loyalty, and the Court Artist	p. 189
Epilogue: A Reconsideration of Jeban roy de France	p. 278
Bibliography	p. 305
Index	p. 331
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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