Gendered subject, gendered spectator: Mary Magdalen in the gaze of Margaret of York

Abstract

This paper treats the construction of gender by the consumer and producers of a devotional manual commissioned by Margaret of York (1446-1503), duchess of Burgundy. The volume, Le dyalogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne a Jesus Christ, is embellished with a frontispiece of the noli me tangere, which, in an arrangement unprecedented in Burgundian court portraiture, depicts a living subject-Margaret-in the guise of Mary Magdalen. This essay posits that the duchess, the primary audience of the miniature, responded to it with a multilayered gaze that reflected both her own experiences as a woman and the Magdalen's complex, gendered persona. Since the text and frontispiece of the manual were produced by men, the volume provides a salient opportunity to explore the tensions that could arise when men crafted women's identities. In particular, a potentially destabilizing contradiction exists between the text and image that had the potential to undermine the duchess' piety. This negating message, however, would not h...