ABSTRACT
After the death of Charles the Bold on the battlefield at Nancy in 1477, theproduction of devotional portrait diptychs at the Burgundian court came to an abrupt halt. 1 The situation changed dramatically, however, at the courtof Margaret of Austria, who was Charles’s granddaughter through Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian I, and who ruled the Netherlands as Regent andGovernor-General from Mechelen almost continually from 1507 to her death in 1530. There, patrons clamored for the paintings. Artists JanGossaert, Michael Sittow, Jan Mostaert, Jan Vermeyen, and Bernard van Orley responded by turning out diptychs in impressive numbers. 2 One canspeculate that the Regent loosely facilitated the proliferation of the type through the social, political, and artistic networks she sustained at thecourt: all of the painters just mentioned also worked for her. In some cases, she may even have been a direct link between the patron and painter. Margaret, however, involved herself far beyond facilitating such contacts. At least two and probably three times, the Regent commissioned diptychsportraying Erard de la Marck, Bishop of Liège, her close friend and respected advisor. 3 She kept one of the paintings in her private quarters inher palace at Mechelen, where, in essence, she could scrutinize it on demand.
