Raising, Educating, and Portraying Heirs to the Danish Throne at the court of Margaret of Austria

Abstract: Margaret of Austria (1480-1530) was renowned for her excellent political skills, dedicated administration of her dynasty’s concerns, and as a patron of the arts. She created an outstanding Renaissance court in Mechelen, where she also took care of relatives who had been ousted from their position as rulers, as was the case for Isabella of Austria and Christian II of Denmark, who were exiled from their kingdom in 1523. The children of this royal couple, members of the Habsburg family, went on to be raised and educated in Mechelen. To shed light upon the education of the princes, first the attention will be devoted to the schooling of the members of the Habsburg dynasty, the children of Philip the Fair and Juana I of Castile, who spent their early years at Mechelen. Later on, the education and the privacy of Dorothea, John and Christina, the children of Christian II and Isabella of Austria at the Court of Savoy will be analyzed. The paper studies the privileged educational program created for these children to check how scientific knowledge formed part of the syllabus set for the heirs to the Danish throne and how these children also contributed to creating an idealized image of Habsburg heirs. To answer those questions, the correspondence preserved in the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) and exchanged between Habsburgs between 1523 and 1525 serves as a source. Furthermore, the insight provided by these documents is complemented by an iconographic analysis of the portraits attributed to Jan Gossaert, as this artist met the princes in person, while his representations were inspired by the tradition of child portraiture circa 1500. Although there is a lack of documentation concerning the education of children within the close family milieu during the early decades of the sixteenth century, thanks to the sources examined below some insights may be provided into Renaissance pedagogy, the role given to science and the emerging early modern understanding of the world in private and courtly entourage. This text was published as a result of the project funded through 2022/47/D/HS2/01798 - NCN, Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki).