Quelques observations sur l’imaginaire du souverain‑père (xve‑xviiie siècles)

In early modern Europe, genetic‑biological paternity – i. e. the ability to procreate –, the moral and emotional ability to behave in a paternal manner and, finally, paternal authority in the legal and social sense of the term were intrinsically linked to the image of political leadership. The display of fatherhood made it possible to convey concepts and ideas, such as virility, dynastic continuity and the continuity of a political regime, the sovereign’s responsibility and his emotional ties with his subjects. The alleged natural authority of the father was used to justify a rules legitimacy to govern his people. The article offers a heuristic approach, intended as a contribution to a preliminary phenomenology of visual representations of the body of the monarch as a father, without pretending to offer a systematic or exhaustive study of this imagery. The case studies, which are to be situated between the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the end of the eighteenth century, cover a geographical area ranging from the Holy Roman Empire to France, Spain and Sweden.