Margaret of Austria

Margaret of Austria, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a portrait of the young archduchess—daughter of Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy—painted by Jean Hey around 1490, when Margaret was a political pawn shuttled between courts following the dissolution of her betrothal to the French dauphin. Hey's portrait captures her at a moment of personal political uncertainty with a combination of precise physical observation and psychological restraint that makes it one of the finest surviving portraits of a royal child. The Metropolitan acquired the painting as part of its strong collection of northern European early Renaissance art.

The archduchess is presented in three-quarter view, her face rendered with the soft oil modeling that allows Hey to capture both the youth of the sitter and the gravity of her dynastic situation. Her costume—the elaborate headdress and jewelry of a royal child—is described with the material specificity that Flemish technique demanded and northern European patrons expected.