Jennifer DiBernardo
ARTH225: Renaissance and Baroque
Madonna and Child Enthroned by Bernard Van Orley Contract Margaret of Austria comes from a wealthy family of high political standing. Her great grandfather, Phillip the Good, had started the tradition of devotional portrait diptychs in the court. Since Margaret was young, she found that she was enthralled by her grandfather’s portrait diptych and art works in general. Commissioning art pieces was a way to self promote in the court. When Margaret’s nephew, Charles, came to power in 1515, Margaret lost a great deal of her political rights to rule. From then onward, Margaret wanted to promote her hierarchal standing and for it to stay stagnant. Margaret felt that her patronage of the fine arts…show more content… Bernard Van Orley’s Madonna and Child Enthroned was kept in Margaret of Austria’s prided art collection until her death in 1530. From that point, her nephew Charles took it into his collection. The family kept a great deal of Margaret’s commissioned art works in the palace and in storage for years and passed them down through generations. In times when the family was lacking in money, they would auction off various works of art for revenue. Bernard Van Orley’s Madonna and Child Enthroned was auctioned off at some point in its history for family revenue. At the auction in which this painting was a featured piece, a representative from the Binghamton Art Museum was present. He/She had recognized the painting to be of the relatively famous Flemish painter, Bernard Van Orley, and bid on the piece for the art museum’s collection of Renaissance works for its unique qualities in representation of 16th century feminism and piety. The piece was also a riveting find because it had once belonged to a royal family. Though Madonna and Child depictions were a relatively common commissioned image during its time in history, also so for the image of the Madonna Lactans, this piece is different from many others that came before it by depicting the Madonna and Child in a secular setting among other people in the same picture. It is this combination of both pious and secular that characterizes paintings in the early to mid 1500s in the