The portrait, defined here as an accurate physiognomic likeness of an individual rendered in an independent image, has been seen as a clear marker of the differences between the representational strategies and priorities of the medieval period and the modern. Indeed, as Stephen Perkinson notes in his introduction to The Likeness of the King, it is tempting to understand “the introduction of physiognomic likeness as a visual symptom marking the triumph of the self-conscious individual of the Renaissance over the anonymity and corporate identities of the Middle Ages” (6). Perkinson counters this with a detailed exploration of how the identity of individuals was visually communicated in works of art made in France in the fourteenth century, and in doing so he has produced another milestone in the ongoing efforts of medievalists to blur, if not erase, the superficial line imposed between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Rather than anachronistically viewing the earliest instances of physiognomic likeness as “halting steps on the path to the modern portrait” (237), he places these images within the continuously developing artistic context of the late medieval courts of France. Perkinson lays out a strong argument that physiognomic likeness was not seen as a replacement for earlier established means of identifying the subject—heraldry, inscriptions, regalia, and other references to personal and familial identity—but as a supplement to these, employed by artists as they adapted their skills to the changing circumstances of court culture.

Perkinson frames this exploration with a discussion and reassessment of the Jehan roy de France panel, and he opens the book with an account of how that painting has been understood since it was first brought to public attention in 1634. Like the more detailed account in Perkinson’s 2005 Art Bulletin article (“From ‘Curious’ to Canonical: Jehan Roy de France and the Origins of the French School,” The Art Bulletin 87.3 [September 2005]: 507–32), this serves as a welcome reminder of the degree to which our understanding of individual works of art has been shaped by the priorities of earlier authors and, importantly, museums and other exhibition venues. The introduction also examines how portraiture as a representational mode has come to be understood, and includes an outline of what will be discussed in the following chapters.

In the first chapter, Perkinson traces the development of medieval thought on the issues of likeness and representation in a series of short discussions dealing with early medieval pictorial theory, the use of gesture and allegory in pictures and texts, Villard de Honnecourt’s differentiation between the terms contrefaire and portraiture, optical theory, physiognomy, and the Veronica relic. He provides a provocative summary of these topics, each of which could easily merit a book-length study, and the chapter as a whole provides a useful, if selective, introduction to medieval theories of representation.

In the second chapter, Perkinson examines the use of physical likeness in the portrayal of royal or otherwise politically important persons in public and semi-public contexts, throughout the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In this period, the political elites of France had at their disposal a flexible and adaptable set of “interlocking semiotic systems” (133) including inscriptions, heraldry, gestures, materials, and an array of established and widely recognized visual signals indicating social and professional status. The combination of some or all of these systems allowed for a representation of a person to be highly individualized and clearly identified, and if physiognomic likeness was sometimes used, it does not seem to have been relied on or given any sort of priority.

In chapter 3, Perkinson identifies a shift during the fourteenth century toward greater reliance on physiognomic individuality, and concentrates on textual traces of this shift, analyzing a variety of texts, but giving most of his attention to courtly romances. He uses these texts to demonstrate a growing belief that a person’s exterior appearance revealed at least some of her or his essential interior qualities. As artists worked to satisfy this expectation, their skill in capturing physical likeness was increasingly appreciated and considered to be an intellectual as well as a mechanical achievement. These changes are paralleled in the evolving use of the words portraire and contrefaire.

In the fourth chapter, Perkinson concentrates on the roles and concerns of artists. In order to secure patronage, artists sought ways to draw attention not only to their skill as image makers (artifice) but to their intellectual capacity for creating new images by means of memory and innovation (engin). In the first half of the fourteenth century, these facets of an artist’s talent were often displayed in highly detailed and naturalistic depictions of plants and animals, or by working in more than one medium. Close examination of the work of a handful of individual artists in the second half of the fourteenth century and the first decades of the fifteenth shows how artists employed physiognomic likeness as a sign of loyalty, and a means of flattery—the ability to recall and creatively reproduce the facial features of the patron was understood as a mark of respect and love, and encouraged the patron to continue employing the artist. Perkinson does not discount the roles of patrons or recipients in the series of transactions that produced the finished work of art, but his emphasis on the importance of the artists in determining the products of those transactions, and his acknowledgement that image-makers had their own agendas, is refreshing.

Perkinson returns to the Jehan roy de France (housed in the Louvre) in the epilogue. He points out the fundamental weaknesses in previous assessments of the painting, which have been rooted in modern ideas of portraiture, and proposes that by starting with the work itself, and by looking more closely at how the painter has represented the subject, it is possible to arrive at a better understanding of what this particular painting was intended to do. He does not in fact present any precise conclusions, but provides several scenarios that would account for the creation of this panel. The most plausible of these is that the work was intended to function as a reminder of an absent king, either during John II’s imprisonment in England, or after his death, and that the intended audience was limited to an intimate circle centered on John’s son, Charles V. This reexamination provides an example, by no means isolated, of how our understanding of individual works of art has sometimes been compromised by the desire to situate these works within a greater art-historical narrative.

Perkinson’s argument is based on evidence drawn from such a wide array of sources, including visual arts produced in a variety of media, and literary, scientific, historical, theological, and political texts, that there is little room to wonder if any (surviving) voices have gone unheard. His examination of textual sources is strengthened by careful attention to how language is being used by the authors, and he relates shifts in the use of certain words to changes in the understanding of art and artistic practice.

Perkinson’s careful and detailed analyses of works of art is to be commended, as is his thoughtful assessment of what evidence these works can and cannot provide, but his presentation of this evidence is somewhat compromised by the reproductions of the works in question. Throughout the book, the reader is hindered by low-quality black-and-white images that are often too small to be of much use. This is hardly Perkinson’s fault, nor is it unusual in art-historical publications, but it is nevertheless a detriment to the value of the book. More problematic, perhaps, is that certain works of art are introduced as key points of evidence but not illustrated. An example is a fifteenth-century depiction of an architectural feature in Philip IV’s palace complex on the Ile-de-la-Cité (127, 128). Given the importance Perkinson places on this image, if a reproduction in the text was not possible, at least a precise reference to where a reproduction might be found could have been included.

In the overall structure of the argument, Perkinson’s claims are clear and persuasive, but at certain points, particularly the third chapter, the narrative is rambling, and it is not always obvious why some points have been treated at greater length while others have been dealt with more briefly. A more careful approach to editing might have solved this problem, and might also have removed some minor distractions, such as a lack of consistency in translations, numerous typos, and the occasional error in figure numbers.

These criticisms aside, Perkinson’s study sheds a great deal of welcome light on how artists and patrons chose to represent identity in the visual arts of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. The evidence in support of his thesis is strong, and he uses this evidence well, quickly persuading the reader that his approach just makes sense: any innovative work of art will be best understood on its own terms, and we should strive to avoid retroactively defining such a work by more recent developments. The Likeness of the King provides a richer understanding of the panel painting in the Louvre and of how identity was visually communicated in late medieval France. It also offers a useful model for approaching other medieval works of art that might at first glance strike modern eyes as singular.