Family Tree
MARY OF BURGUNDY 1457–1482
MARGARET OF AUSTRIA 1480–1530
MAXIMILIAN I 1459–1519
ISABELLA I OF CASTILE 1451–1504
FERDINAND II OF ARAGON 1452–1516
PHILIP THE HANDSOME 1478–1506
ELEANOR 1498–1558
JOHANNA VANDER GHEYNST c. 1500–1541
CHARLES V 1500–1558
JOANNA OF CASTILE 1479–1555
ISABELLA 1501–1526
FERDINAND I 1503–1564
MARY OF HUNGARY 1505–1558
CATHERINE 1507–1578
ALESSANDRO DE’ MEDICI 1510–1537
MARGARET OF PARMA 1522–1586
PHILIP II 1527–1598
ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL 1503–1539
OTTAVIO FARNESE 1524–1586
MARY 1528–1603
JOANNA 1535–1573
ALEXANDER FARNESE 1545–1592
CARLO FARNESE 1545–1549
LATE JULY 1522
Margaret of Parma is born in Pamele (Oudenaarde) as the natural daughter of Emperor Charles V and Johanna Vander Gheynst, a local maid.
AUGUST 1522
Young Margaret becomes a ward of Andries Douvrin in Brussels.
JUNE 1529
Margaret is married off to Alessandro de’ Medici, the natural son of Pope Clement VII. Pope Clement VII and Charles V sign the marriage contract in Barcelona. Charles V officially recognises his daughter soon after. From then on, she has the right to bear and officially use the name ‘Margaret of Austria’.
7 JANUARY 1533
Margaret leaves the Netherlands and travels to Italy.
25 NOVEMBER 1535
Thirteen-year-old Margaret meets her father for the first time in Naples.
28 FEBRUARY 1536
The marriage ceremony of Margaret and Alessandro de’ Medici takes place.
6 JANUARY 1537
Alessandro de’ Medici is assassinated.
MAY 1538
Margaret is promised in marriage to Ottavio Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III. Their marriage is celebrated on 4 November in the Sistine Chapel.
27 AUGUST 1545
Margaret gives birth to two sons, Carlo and Alessandro (Alexander). Carlo dies in 1549.
NOVEMBER 1556
Margaret is summoned to the Netherlands by King Philip II. She travels there with Alexander, now aged eleven.
MAY 1557
Margaret returns to Italy. That same year, Alexander travels with Philip II to Madrid, where he is raised and educated at the king’s court.
MARCH 1559
Philip II appoints Margaret as governorgeneral of the Netherlands. She officially takes up her office on 7 August.
11 NOVEMBER 1565
Mary of Portugal makes her Joyous Entry into Brussels and marries Alexander Farnese, Margaret’s son.
18 NOVEMBER 1565
During the wedding festivities, the Compromise of Nobles is established.
5 APRIL 1566
The nobles submit their petition to Margaret.
SUMMER 1566
The situation is tense in the Netherlands. On 10 August, the Iconoclasm erupts.
APRIL 1567
Margaret resigns upon learning that Philip II has dispatched the Duke of Alba to the Netherlands. At the end of the year, she leaves Brussels and returns to Italy, settling in Abruzzo.
SEPTEMBER 1572
Margaret is appointed lifelong regent of Abruzzo by Philip II.
LATE FEBRUARY 1580
Margaret leaves L’Aquila and returns to the Netherlands as regent at the request of Philip II.
26 JULY 1580
Margaret arrives in Namur. She asks her son Alexander to divide the position of governor-general into separate military and civil roles. He refuses.
31 DECEMBER 1581
Philip II signs Alexander’s appointment as governor and captain-general. Margaret is not permitted to leave the Netherlands.
14 SEPTEMBER 1583
Philip II grants Margaret permission to leave the Netherlands. She returns to her beloved Abruzzo.
18 JANUARY 1586
Margaret dies in Ortona. On 30 May, she is buried in the Church of San Sisto in Piacenza, where her tomb can still be seen today.
A Portrait of the Emperor’s Daughter
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY I
FIG. 1
Anthonis Mor, Portrait of Margaret of Parma, c. 1555 oil on panel, 87 × 65 cm. Private collection
OUDENAARDE
Margaret of Parma (fig. 1) was born in Oudenaarde in late July 1522. She was the daughter of Charles V (1500–1558) and Johanna Vander Gheynst (c. 1500–1541), a local maid. In the autumn of 1521, the young emperor (fig. 2) was quartered in Oudenaarde, a strategically located city on the River Scheldt, just a day’s march from where he was laying siege to the city of Tournai. The siege of Tournai by Habsburg troops was a chapter in the Italian Wars, a series of conflicts arising from the power struggle between Charles and his rival, the French king Francis I (1494–1547). Although the conflict was fought mainly on the Italian peninsula, the Netherlands and surrounding territories played a strategic role in the geopolitical tugof-war between the two monarchs.
Oudenaarde, which was famed for its tapestries, was deliberately chosen as a temporary residence. The city was within easy reach of the battlefield, and security considerations also played a role. Since the early fifteenth century, it had been a loyal ally of the House of ValoisBurgundy and the House of Habsburg. The Lalaing family, in particular, produced descendants over several generations who became prominent courtiers of the Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburgs. From late October until mid-December – with a brief, one-week interruption – the emperor stayed with the then-governor of the city, Charles de Lalaing. He lived in the Burgundian castle (which no longer exists) on the right bank of the Scheldt. According to the most plausible version of the story, the young emperor got to know Johanna at one of the festivities the governor organised in his honour. Although several authors have ‘reconstructed’ the meeting between the emperor and the maiden – sometimes in excruciating detail and often highly romanticised – the exact circumstances in which they met remain unknown.
Johanna, daughter of a tapestry weaver, hailed from Nukerke and worked as a maid in the Lalaing household. She was of humble birth, but her daughter would go on to join the highest political echelons in turbulent sixteenthcentury Europe. Margaret was born in late July in Pamele. Since we have no birth or baptismal certificate, we must rely on other sources to partly reconstruct the context of her birth and the timeline of preceding and subsequent events.1 An agreement was signed with Johanna on 1 August, granting her a lifetime annuity.
Her daughter must thus have been born a few days earlier. Johanna was also ‘compensated’ with an arranged marriage, allowing her to climb up the social ladder. In 1525, she married Johan Van den Dycke, lord of Zandvliet; the couple had several children and ended up settling in Brussels.2
FIG. 2
Jakob Seisenegger, Portrait of Emperor Charles V, 1532 oil on panel, 205 × 123 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. A024/1995
FIG. 13 (previous page)
Gerard Mercator, Evropa, ad magnæ Europæ Gerardi Mercatoris P. imitationem, 1595 hand-coloured copper engraving, 38.3 × 46.7 cm. Amsterdam, Collection of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society (KNAG), University of Amsterdam
FIG. 14
Anonymous (Venetian), Süleyman the Magnificent, second quarter of the 16th century oil on canvas, 99 × 85 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 2429
difficult to cross in winter. Charles relied on the Lombard postal company De Tassis, which had been headquartered in Brussels since 1500, for communication between his various European territories. Managing the more remote colonial possessions proved much more daunting, however. During Charles’s reign, the conquistadores travelled further and further into Central and South America. As a result, the economic importance of these overseas territories grew rapidly. However, it took months for royal directives destined for the New World to arrive at their destination. As a result, there was no effective control over what was going on in Spanish America.
COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT
All the same, the question remains whether it was possible to keep an oversight of the never-ending flow of messages within Charles’s empire. Family members, governors, ambassadors, envoys, councillors, soldiers, spies and other informants were constantly sending updates to the emperor from all corners of Europe (and beyond). So, how could all this information be effectively managed? Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, who was Charles’s most senior adviser from 1530 until his death in 1550 –he was responsible for all territories except the Spanish kingdoms and the colonies – mentions regularly in his many letters to Mary of Hungary that he had to work all hours to read and reply to all these messages. At times, he was on the brink of exhaustion. 3 Bureaucratisation and a structural, well-organised approach to governance were only very gradually implemented. Charles’s successor, Philip II, put an end to the itinerant nature of his government by choosing Madrid as the capital of his empire in 1561.
In wartime especially, communication and the need for consultation increased exponentially. Charles V was constantly engaged in wars during his reign, although, by his own admission, he had never sought to conquer additional territory and had only taken up arms to defend the Catholic faith and safeguard his lands and dynastic rights like a Miles Christi (‘Soldier of Christ’).4 This definitely was the case for the fight against the Ottomans. In the second half of the fourteenth century, successive Ottoman sultans launched a territorial expansion effort westwards, leading to the occupation of large parts of south-eastern Europe and, subsequently, the annexation of almost the entire Balkans. The conquest of Belgrade by Süleyman the Magnificent (fig. 14) in 1521 paved the way for the annexation of the Kingdom of Hungary;
it was largely overrun by the Ottomans in 1526. Charles’s brother-in-law, King Louis of Hungary, died in the fighting. The Habsburg territories were also under threat. In the summer of 1529, Süleyman’s troops laid siege to Vienna. Fortunately, the city was able to push back the Ottomans, who were hampered by unfavourable weather conditions. In the following years, the sultan would make a few more attempts to push further into Europe until hostilities in the east of the empire claimed all his attention and resources. The heartland of the House of Austria had narrowly escaped the Turkish invasion, which also adds some nuance to assertions about Charles’s great power.5
Conversely, several European states felt threatened by Emperor Charles. The French king, in particular, perceived the Habsburg rule to the north, east and south of his kingdom as a perilous encirclement, which he wanted to neutralise by any means possible. The showdown between the Habsburgs and the Valois began as early as 1519 when Francis I became Charles’s rival for the imperial crown. Shortly after Charles’s election, the first of many wars broke out (fig. 16). The hostilities would only end in 1559 with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, confirming Habsburg supremacy. At the same time, however, it also was an indication of the extreme effort that Charles V and later Philip II had to make to bring France to its knees. The state was bankrupt as a result. The confrontations between Habsburg and France and its continually changing allies played out mainly in Italy; thus the wars, which lasted many decades, are often referred to as ‘the Italian wars’, as explained in the second part of this text.
However, the conflict that proved the emperor’s downfall, both on the military and mental level, involved many of his own subjects. From the outset, Charles V positioned himself as a defender of Roman Catholicism and a guarantor of Christian unity. However, the theses of the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) disrupted religious unity in his territories, giving rise to violence and turbulence, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. Despite the papal condemnation of Luther’s ideas and the imperial ban in 1520–21, Protestant views rapidly found sway with the population. Charles’s response was a drastic crackdown on anyone who deviated from doctrine, but repression did not stop the spread of Protestantism. In large parts of the Holy Roman Empire, moreover, there was no persecution of the young reformation movement as more and more sovereigns and imperial cities became evangelical. During the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–47, Charles managed to crush the Protestant armies. Just
One and a Half Times Governor of the Netherlands
Margaret served as governor-general of the Low Countries one and a half times. Based in Coudenberg Palace in Brussels, she ruled first from 1559 to 1567. Thirteen years later, in 1580, she returned to the Netherlands, tasked with the same mission. By then, however, the realm was being ripped apart by rebellion and religious strife. As a result, she was never able to excel during her second term because, on the one hand, Brussels had become enemy territory and, on the other, she faced opposition from her own son. Nonetheless, she stayed there for three years, until 1583, maintaining her contacts and keeping in touch with her correspondents. Even though she only partially served her second term, Margaret still held the highest-ranking administrative post within the Netherlands – the northernmost part of the Spanish-Habsburg empire –for more than a decade, both formally and informally. Margaret was a powerful woman, but the turbulent times were not in her favour.
APPOINTMENT
FIG. 85
Anthonis Mor, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, c. 1562 oil on canvas, 106.3 × 77.6 cm.
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 585B
Margaret was appointed governor-general of the Netherlands in 1559, when her half-brother King Philip II (fig. 87) left for the Iberian peninsula – forever, as it would transpire. Although there was an impressive line-up of Habsburg candidates to choose from, Margaret’s profile was deemed the best match because she had been born in the Netherlands, partly brought up there, and ‘spoke the local languages’. Her letter of credence touted her greatest disadvantage – she was the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V, after all – as an advantage: she was born to a local woman in Oudenaarde in Flanders and her childhood years were spent near Coudenberg Palace in Brabant.1 After her early recognition as a member of the dynasty, the Habsburg governors in Mechelen and Brussels oversaw her education. They were her godmother, Margaret of Austria (regent of the Netherlands from 1507 to 1530), after whom she was named, and later her aunt, Mary of Hungary (governor-general of the Netherlands from 1531 to 1555). She thus succeeded her godmother and aunt, both childless, through the female line. In that sense, Margaret was an excellent dynastic compromise for the post in Brussels. To assuage any discontent over his departure and Margaret’s appointment, Philip II promised to send his firstborn son, Don Carlos, to Brussels as soon as possible, a pledge he failed to keep.2
FIG. 112
Anonymous, Bird’s eye view of Piacenza, c. 1700 etching, hand-coloured in pink, green, blue and brown, 393 x 509 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Print Room, RP-P-1957-608-123
FIG. 121
Willem de Pannemaker, after Michiel Coxcie, God Blesses Noah’s Family (detail), after 1567
FIG. 122
Workshop of Joost van Herzeele, The Feast of Dryads (Ceres Tapestry), c. 1559–60 wool and silk, gold and silver thread, 405 × 455 cm. Rome, Presidenza della Repubblica, Palazzo del Quirinale, inv. O.DP., n. 20
Brussels tapestry production reached its heights.8 Brussels weavers excelled in recreating their monumental painted models by interweaving threads of many different colours to create elaborate textures and forms. Huge quantities of expensive raw materials – wool, coloured silk and, for the finest pieces, gold or silver metallic threads – were used in manufacturing a single high-quality tapestry, while specialised workforces could spend several years doing the actual weaving. 9
Two workshops, run by Willem de Pannemaker and Frans Geubels respectively, dominated high-quality tapestry production in Brussels in the 1560s.10 Painter Michel Coxcie was the key designer, imposing his artistic signature on most of the prominent tapestry projects of the time.11
MYTHOLOGY AND GARDENS
The two tapestries Perseus at the Court of Atlas and The Feast of Dryads (fig. 123 and 122), now part of the prestigious Palazzo del Quirinale collection, bear the date 1559, with Margaret’s coat of arms prominently woven in the upper corners (fig. 121). The subjects are indicated by Latin titles in the upper border. These splendid pieces belonged to a set of sixteen tapestries ordered by Margaret in the year when she took up office and moved to the Coudenberg Palace in Brussels. The tapestry set was important in terms of both size and status.12 It was the fruit of a collaboration between master weavers Joost Van Heerzeele and Frans Geubels,13 a joint venture most probably required because of the scale and ambition of the project.
