Title: Symbolic and Veristic Identity: Portraiture at the Court of Burgundy 1380-1480In the history of Western art, one tends to see the renaissance as the time when portraiture starts to denominate representations of particular individuals, one of many rebirths of the Roman Antiquity. However, in the mid-fourteenth century, veristic portraiture had already re-emerged to supplement symbolic representations of identity in representations of European rulers at the then most prominent European courts, i.e. in Paris, London, Vienna and Prague, as testified by the famous portrait of the French king, John the Good (d. 1364), now in the Louvre. In this article, I will concentrate on portraits of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, Philippe the Bold (d. 1404), John the Fearless (d. 1419), Phillippe the Good (d. 1467) and Charles the Bold (d. 1477). The portraits in question will be addressed in the light of the patrons’ and the artists’ awareness of the concept of ‘likeness,’ looking at how this concept shines through as either a symbolic or a veristic identity in the representations of the dukes.
