Des chevaux réels et un cheval idéal : naturalisme et idéalisation des chevaux des portraits équestres italiens des Trecento et Quattrocento

Real horses and ideal horses in equestrian portraits of the Trecento and Quattrocento. One of the special characteristics of Italian equestrian portraits during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where the depiction of the mounted horse is concerned, is the dual tendency towards naturalism on the one hand and towards idealisation on the other. More broadly speaking, this tension between individualisation and idealisation is at the heart of the artistic thinking of the Renaissance period, which was particularly keen on the portrait. The trend towards naturalism, which can be perceived in effigies, in other equestrian representations and in morphological or physiological studies and models, refers to the novel practice of painting after nature. But this does not eliminate a certain idealisation of the horse, deriving from a theoretical and artistic ideal