XLVIII. Lustrum der Utrechtsche Hoogeschool. Intocht van Hertog Karel den Stoute te Zutfen, IV Augustus MCCCCLXXIII. Gekostumeerde optocht van Heeren Studenten, gehouden te Utrecht den 27 Juni 1876 1876

This chromolithograph print commemorates a student festival in Utrecht in 1876, celebrating the anniversary of the University with a historical reenactment. The lettering, embellished with floral motifs and set within square frames, evokes the illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. This deliberate echo of medieval aesthetics is particularly intriguing when juxtaposed with the image's subject: the entry of Duke Charles the Bold into Zutphen in 1473. Duke Charles, a powerful figure of his time, here becomes a symbol, re-emerging centuries later in the collective memory of these students. One cannot help but consider this revival through a psychoanalytic lens, seeing it as a kind of cultural return of the repressed. The students, dressing in historical garb, are not merely re-enacting history. They are tapping into a deep well of cultural memory, where figures like Charles the Bold resonate as archetypes of power and spectacle. The image, therefore, acts as a stage, upon which the past is not just remembered, but relived and reinterpreted, revealing the cyclical nature of history.