ABSTRACT
Graeco-Roman sculpture continued to influence the stages of the joyous entries in the Low Countries and the monumentalising of the performing burghers. In many cities of the Low Countries, the City Maiden welcomed the new ruler on a platform, triumphal arch or pageant wagon right at one of the city gates, so directly at the moment when the ruler entered the city. Due to their focus on the rise and fall of the living statues, historians of politics, art and architecture have never questioned why, for centuries, the cities of the Low Countries chose time and again to stage motionless and silent burghers on platforms, triumphal arches and pageant wagons for crucial public events of civic diplomacy. The appearance of statues vivantes in the late medieval and early modern entries in the Low Countries was closely linked to many media, as they shared the same rhetorical strategies.
