Ourse a Iuuenal: O programa iconográfico da família Jouvenel des Ursins na França do século XV

This article proposes a contextual analysis of the iconographic programme through which the Jouvenel des Ursins family celebrated its collective social rise in fifteenth-century France. The Jouvenel des Ursins were a family of parvenus from Troyes whose social prominence in French society was tightly connected to the legal training of several of its male members and to the service that they were able to provide to royal government and the Church. Despite their modest origins, the Jouvenel des Ursins sought to celebrate and memorialise their social status by claiming an obscure parentage with the Roman family of the Orsini. This article argues, however, that their connection to the offices and institutions that created the material conditions of their social promotion was equally important to the construction of their social identity. Genealogical and institutional celebration thus appear subtly entwined in the visual lexicon that emerges from the portraits and the decorated manuscripts that they commissioned, intended to remain for posterity as a carefully crafted testimonial of their social prestige and success.