ABSTRACT
After the death of Charles the Bold on the battlefield at Nancy in 1477, the production of devotional portrait diptychs at the Burgundian court came to an abrupt halt. Margaret's diptych now in Ghent, attributed to the Master of 1499, locates the Regent in a dark chamber, equipped with a fireplace appointed with a richly carved wooden mantel. Margaret's diptych in Ghent is the only one of the Regent's diptychs in full-length format, a format that had fallen out of favor for works of the type by this period. This is an important distinction, for it signals Margaret's attention to a specific diptych in her collection made at least 25 years previously. Gender underpins another controversy against which Margaret's diptychs should be considered: the ongoing and highly contentious challenges to the Hapsburgian rights to the Burgundian Netherlands. Like Maximilian, Margaret carefully shaped her image to forward a specifically Netherlandish identity.
