A Guest from Flanders

As part of the successful collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Government of Flanders to showcase a loan from a Flemish collection for a year in the newly-installed Kunstkammer the Stedelijke Musea Mechelen will begin its visit to Vienna on June 26, 2014.

The selected work is a triptych depicting young Archduke Charles, later Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), as King of Spain, a title he inherited in 1516 upon the death of his maternal grandfather, King Ferdinand of Aragon. The many arms and inscriptions refer to territories over which the young King then ruled or to which he laid claim. The arms in the corners of the central image illustrate the fact that Charles personified the alliance between the houses of Habsburg, Burgundy, Castile and Aragon.

The triptych is by Jan van Battel the younger, the town-painter of Mechelen, who executed it for the city’s town-hall. It is probably a copy of the portrait commissioned in 1515/16 by Archduchess Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), Regent of the Netherlands and the aunt of Charles V, from her court-painter Barent van Orley. Like her father, Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), Margaret commissioned – and disseminated – dynastic portraits that functioned as a propaganda medium for herself and her family.

Jan van Battel also worked as a painter for Margaret at her palace in Mechelen. The composition of this triptych is informed by a seal stamp that features a full-length portrait of Charles surrounded by coats-of-arms. This illustrates the fact that such a painting could also function as an official substitute for the absent sovereign.

In Vienna the triptych is on show in Gallery 30 of the Kunstkammer, which is dedicated to Margaret of Austria and her two nephews, Charles V and Ferdinand I; it is displayed in the company of numerous artefacts that document the Habsburgs’ dynastic pictorial programme during the first half of the 16th century, among them a large tapestry featuring the arms of Charles V. On show in the adjacent Gallery 31 is Hans Kels’ game board that uses similar means to illustrate the power and prestige of the generation of Charles V that saw the rise of house of Habsburg to become a world power.