In fifteenth-century Europe, a strengthened urban professionalism produced new dynamics within the spheres of power, and the development of an awareness of agency and personhood in its players. The portraits discussed in this book illustrate the complexity of this emerging outlook. However, this takeaway suggests a definition of mimesis from the perspective of the everyday efforts to consolidate personal and, in turn, collective accomplishments. Attention must be paid also to the fact that the economic and political gamut of the entrepreneurial groups that fuelled this professionalism had been enhanced by the exploitation of the patriarchal system. This chapter argues that the social and legal anxieties of the patriarchal system can be traced in women's symbolic actions beyond the painted image in performative self-imaging. The Venetian culture of display suits this last task, and further, its portraiture shows a fruitful reinterpretation of the Netherlandish style. Therefore, it is the subject with which I shall conclude this book.

As explained, the number of surviving fifteenth-century male likenesses across Europe is conspicuously higher than that of women because it reflects men's multidimensional experiences as they aged in life: marriage, productive friendships, professional networking, and so on.