Isabella Of Bourbon

Isabella of Bourbon, Countess of Charolais (c. 1434 – 25 September 1465) was the second wife of Charles the Bold, Count of Charolais and future Duke of Burgundy. She was a daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon and Agnes of Burgundy, and the mother of Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Burgundy.

Life

Not much is known about Isabella's life. She was the daughter of the reigning Duke of Bourbon, and his Burgundian wife, Agnes, daughter of John the Fearless, the powerful Duke of Burgundy.

Although her father was politically opposed to his brother-in-law, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, he betrothed Isabella to Charles, Count of Charolais, only legitimate son and heir of Burgundy as a condition of truce. She and the Count of Charolais married on 30 October 1454 at Lille, France, and they were reportedly very much in love, perhaps because of (or causing) her husband's faithfulness.

In 1459, Isabella stood godmother to Joachim, the short-lived son of the refugee Dauphin of France and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy. Upon his succession to the throne of France, the Dauphin abandoned his wife in Burgundy, leaving the young Queen Charlotte dependent on Isabella's aid.

After several months of illness, Isabella died of tuberculosis in Antwerp aged 31.

Tomb

Isabella's early death meant that she had little significance or influence during her lifetime, but in death she became a symbol of the power of the Dukes of Burgundy, which would later be inherited by her only daughter Mary. As the duke's second marriage failed to produce a son, Mary was heiress to the duchy, and her marriage to a Habsburg had major repercussions for centuries.

Isabella's funeral monument was erected in the church of St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp in 1476. It was decorated with 24 brass copper alloy statuettes.Mikolic, p. 2 of noblemen and women standing in niches, now known as 'weepers' or 'mourners', placed above a bronze effigy of Isabella.Weepers from the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon
. Rijksmuseum. Retrieved 23 December 2022 Art historians generally attributed the carvings to Jan Borman the Younger and the castings to Renier van Thienen.Mikolic, p. 1 The mourners clothes are of an earlier fashion than Isabella's, probably because the mourners were copied from older tombs.

During the Iconoclast Fury of 1566, radical Protestants destroyed images in Catholic churches and monasteries. The destruction was justified by Calvin's contention that all images in churches were idolatrous and had to be removed. As a result, Isabella's tomb was stripped of its decorations and the 'mourners' disappeared. In 1691 the burgomasters of Amsterdam purchased the statues which they thought represented the counts and countesses of Holland. Pieter de Vos, 'clerk of the secretariat' sold the statuettes, which he had presumably inherited from his father. In exchange De Vos received an annual pension of 150 guilders. He died in 1721; the city had therefore paid De Vos around four thousand five hundred guilders for the mourners.

The mourners are not Isabella's immediate family: they represent her ancestors. Two portraits have been identified as Emperor Louis of Bavaria (with the imperial crown and orb) and Albrecht of Bavaria, with the St Antony cross around his neck. These portraits have been identified on the basis of a list of names published in 1695 by Daniel Papebrochius. The statuettes reveal the kind of clothes worn by Burgundian nobles in the Late Middle Ages. An unusual aspect is the amount of cloth employed in the garments: the sleeves are exceptionally long, as are the robes. Various kinds of headgear are worn, both by men and women, the latter of whom have shaven heads, as was the fashion in those days.

The statues have been on display in the Rijksmuseum since 1887. The rest of the tomb, with the statue of Isabella, are in Antwerp cathedral. Nothing more of the tomb furnishings survives.

File:Remember Me exhibition, Rijksmuseum 19.jpg
File:Remember Me exhibition, Rijksmuseum 20.jpg
File:Remember Me exhibition, Rijksmuseum 22.jpg
File:Remember Me exhibition, Rijksmuseum 23.jpg

Ancestry

References

Sources

* Mikolic, Amanda.
Fashionable Mourners: Bronze Statuettes from the Rijksmuseum
. Cleveland Museum of Art.
* Scholten, Frits.
Isabella’s Weepers: Ten Statues from a Burgundian Tomb
. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2007

External links

Surviving statuettes from Isabella's tomb
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

{{DEFAULTSORT:Isabella Of Bourbon
1434 births
1465 deaths
15th-century French women
15th-century French people
Funerary art
Gothic sculptures
House of Bourbon (France)
House of Valois
15th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Belgium