Synthèse
"This essay critically reexamines Eleanor of Austria’s status as a passive marital pawn subject to Habsburg marital ideology through her performative practice of portraiture. Eleanor’s brief marriage to the king of Portugal and hostile union with the king of France curbed her ability to exercise traditional forms of feminine political power and governance as a queen consort and regent. However, her elevated pedigree, merging Burgundian, Habsburg, and Spanish bloodlines, upbringing at Margaret of Austria’s famed court in Mechelen, and position as the eldest sibling of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, endowed her with a protective dynastic identity that would emerge in portraits executed during her most challenging tenure at the French court."
