Mary of Burgundy

During her reign the country’s regions and subjects demanded the return of rights that her father had taken away from them. This led in 1477 to the drawing up of the agreement known as the Great Privilege, through which Mary of Burgundy, under some pressure, granted unprecedented privileges to the regions. That same year, she married Maximilian I of Austria, making the Burgundian Netherlands part of the Habsburg Empire. Mary remained committed to preserving the Burgundian legacy, as witnessed by her commissioning of the pleurants for her mother Isabella of Bourbon’s mausoleum: the pleurants depict five generations of her ancestors to symbolise the importance of the Burgundian dynasty.