Images of the Courtier in Flemish Thesis Prints

In early modern institutions of higher education, academic dissertations to be defended in public were published in the form of decorated broadsheets summarising the student’s conclusions. The first aim of these engraved posters was to advertise the disputation and to provide an overview of the themes to be discussed. They also presented a visual programme of its unfolding, and could be kept as a souvenir after the ceremony. From the early seventeenth century onwards, thesis prints developed into abundantly illustrated documents accompanied by a dedication to a protector, usually an academic, ecclesiastical or political personality. They were meant to affirm the laureates’ position in society and to glorify their patrons. This paper will analyse the functioning and use of such praising images, relatively unknown today, within the framework of universities and Jesuit colleges of the Southern Low Countries. It will focus on one iconographic theme in particular: the staging of the applicant offering the thesis itself to his protector, in order to highlight the significance of courtly patronage and dedicatory practice in the academic context of public defences