ABSTRACT
The Hours of Mary of Burgundy, so-called for the book's presumed owner and the source of a name for an innovative artist of the late fifteenth century, includes the image of an elegantly dressed young woman before a window that gives on to a view of a church interior. The vocabulary of the seals appears in other representations of Mary of Burgundy created to project her status as ruler, as for example, in the manuscript of the 'Chronijke van Vlaenderen' preserved in the Bruges Stadbibliothek. The image in the genealogy and other posthumous representations of the duchess suggest the mythologizing of Mary of Burgundy after her demise. Images in which she expresses her claims as a sovereign by equating hunting with military prowess may have encouraged chroniclers and historians to emphasize this aspect of her public persona, and to heighten the irony and pathos of the circumstances in which she died.
