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The Chronology and Political Significance of the Tomb of Mary of Burgundy
Abstract
The tomb of Mary of Burgundy, the last Valois ruler of Burgundy, stands in its original site in the church of Notre Dame of Bruges. The date of this monument and the names of the artists who created it have been obscured in the past by an incomplete knowledge of the documentation for it. This essay provides transcriptions of newly discovered documents that detail the dates of construction and the personalities involved in the financing and execution of this project. The dating of the monument to a critical period in the rule of Mary's husband, Maximilian of Austria, leads to a reconsideration of the program of the tomb. The well-developed genealogies that are the great innovation of this monument are seen as a legitimization of Mary's status as the heir to the Burgundian patrimony, in the face of challenges to her right to inherit based on her gender.
The brass and stone tomb of Louis of Mâle and Margaret of Brabant, Count and Countess of Flanders, and their daughter Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, formerly in St. Peter’s Church, Lille, is long destroyed but had a pivotal role in the history of Burgundian funerary sculpture. It was commissioned in 1453 by Louis’s great-grandson Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, although it was Duchess Isabella of Portugal who actually negotiated its contract with the Brussels brass founder Jacob van Gerines. Close examination of the circumstances of the tomb’s creation, notably Philip’s recent suppression of the Ghent revolt, illuminate the interrelation of materiality and identity underpinning the choice of brass for the monument, and the significance of brass for its audiences and its patrons.
Reformy liturgiczne po Soborze Trydenckim doprowadziły do zasadniczych zmian w funkcjonowaniu liturgicznym i w kształtowaniu różnych partii świątyni. W różnych środowiskach terminem kaplica określano więc bądź prezbiterium, bądź aneksy ściśle powiązane z korpusem, bądź też autonomiczne budowle służące kultowi relikwii i cudownych obrazów oraz grzebaniu dostojnych zmarłych. Ten zamęt terminologiczny nie został uporządkowany w tekstach teoretyczno-artystycznych, takich jak mediolańskie Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiastice. Nie sposób zatem wypracować jednoznacznej definicji nowożytnej kaplicy przykościelnej na użytek historii sztuki.
Les tombeaux princiers comptent souvent parmi les chefs-d’œuvre de l’art. Dans l’Europe de l’époque moderne, ils prolongent la vie terrestre des souverains par une apothéose monumentale. Cette esthétique de la mort, présente dans toutes les civilisations, ne saurait occulter la motivation première de l’entreprise de monumentalisation : celle du faire mémoire. Comme les rituels de funérailles, l’édification d’un tombeau doit s’analyser en termes de stratégie politique.Prenant acte de la grande diversité des monuments funéraires élevés par les princes dans l’Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, cet ouvrage s’interroge sur les raisons qui les ont fait naître et sur les significations dont ils ont pu être investis. Ainsi sont abordés les rapports entre tombeau et territoire, tombeau et construction lignagère, tombeau et idéologie monarchique, tombeau et état « moderne ». Au fil des siècles se produit une évolution complexe, si ce n’est contradictoire : désinvestissement de l’espace public de l’église au profit de la nécropole, de la crypte, voire de la sépulture individuelle ou privée ; abandon de la sculpture monumentale de la Renaissance pour l’exaspération rhétorique du sarcophage (aire germanique et nordique), voire renonciation au tombeau de corps et valorisation du monument de cœur (les Bourbons). L’art funéraire ne disparaît pas pour autant. Il triomphe dans l’éphémère des catafalques, véritable média de la gloire des princes et de l’idéologie monarchique depuis le XVIe siècle.Ce volume est le deuxième d’une trilogie consacrée aux funérailles princières de l’Europe moderne. Le premier, Le grand théâtre de la mort, s’intéresse aux rituels. Le troisième aborde les commémorations et la perception de la mort des rois par l’opinion publique.
Public religious practice lay at the heart of civic society in late medieval Europe. In this illuminating study, Andrew Brown draws on the rich and previously little-researched archives of Bruges, one of medieval Europe's wealthiest and most important towns, to explore the role of religion and ceremony in urban society. The author situates the religious practices of citizens - their investment in the liturgy, commemorative services, guilds and charity - within the contexts of Bruges' highly diversified society and of the changes and crises the town experienced. Focusing on the religious processions and festivities sponsored by the municipal government, the author challenges much current thinking on, for example, the nature of 'civic religion'. Re-evaluating the ceremonial links between Bruges and its rulers, he questions whether rulers could dominate the urban landscape by religious or ceremonial means, and offers new insight into the interplay between ritual and power of relevance throughout medieval Europe.
Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political letters, dolls' houses, account books; visual sources, funeral monuments, and buildings commissioned by female patrons; and further artworks as well as heritage sites, streetscapes, souvenirs and clothing with gendered historical resonances. Employing an innovative range of materials from written sources to artworks, material objects, heritage sites and urban precincts, the authors argue that interpretations of late medieval and early modern women's experiences by historians and art scholars interact with presentations by cultural and heritage tourism providers in significant ways that deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers. © Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks 2011. All rights reserved.
In Pious Memories Douglas Brine examines the context, function, and meaning of early Netherlandish memorials (in the form of sculptures, paintings, and brasses), and the role they played in commemorating the dead in the Low Countries during the fifteenth century. © 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. All rights reserved.
Jan van Eyck's van der Paele Virgin, commissioned to mark his patron's chaplaincies at St. Donatian's church, Bruges, can be situated within the visual culture of commemoration in the Netherlands, and specifically within the tradition of erecting a wall-mounted memorial to mark one's burial place or the site of a pious foundation. Scrutiny of written sources—both archival documents and the inscriptions on the picture's frame—together with comparisons with contemporary memorials clarify not only the circumstances of the painting's commission but also the question of its original setting and the precise nature of its memorializing function.
This paper treats the construction of gender by the consumer and producers of a devotional manual commissioned by Margaret of York (1446-1503), duchess of Burgundy. The volume, Le dyalogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne à Jésus Christ, is embellished with a frontispiece of the noli me tangere, which, in an arrangement unprecedented in Burgundian court portraiture, depicts a living subject-Margaret-in the guise of Mary Magdalen. This essay posits that the duchess, the primary audience of the miniature, responded to it with a multilayered gaze that reflected both her own experiences as a woman and the Magdalen's complex, gendered persona. Since the text and frontispiece of the manual were produced by men, the volume provides a salient opportunity to explore the tensions that could arise when men crafted women's identities. In particular, a potentially destabilizing contradiction exists between the text and image that had the potential to undermine the duchess' piety. This negating message, however, would not have jeopardized Margaret's devotion, since she could have exercised her agency as a viewer to resist its unpalatable aspects. Such a model forwards the duchess' gaze as deeply responsive and highly authoritative, so much so that it could have circumvented, through the affirming features of the Magdalen's persona, gender biases that imperiled her political authority.
Issues of gender, international diplomacy, and architectural style conjoin in Margaret of Austria's design of Brou church in Savoy. Raised by several of the most powerful women in Europe, Margaret honed her diplomatic skills during negotiations with England's Henry VII, gaining personal authority and dynastic power expressed within Brou's décor.
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