SOURCE: Carlson, David R. “Thomas Hoccleve and the Chaucer Portrait.” Huntington Library Quarterly 54, no. 4 (1991): 283-300.

In the essay below, Carlson argues for the authenticity of the Chaucer portrait Hoccleve commissioned for his Regement of Princes. In Carlson's view, Hoccleve promoted his relationship with Chaucer, an earlier recipient of royal favor, as a part of his petition for patronage, and contends that the portrait would only be effective if it were a true likeness.

Of the numerous images proposed as representations of Chaucer in early manuscript illuminations, one portrait type has some claim to be a “true portraiture of Geffrey Chaucer”:¹ the Ellesmere-Hoccleve type. It occurs earliest in the miniature of Chaucer as one of the Canterbury pilgrims in the Ellesmere manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, now in the Huntington Library and probably made c. 1400-1410;² and it recurs soon thereafter as an illustration to a passage about Chaucer...