BOURG-EN-BRESSE, France — Almost 500 years ago, in 1518 or 1519, the Flemish artist Bernard van Orley sat down to paint a portrait of Margaret of Austria, one of the most powerful women in Renaissance Europe. At age 3, she was queen of France. At 27, she became regent of the Netherlands, and Van Orley painted Margaret as a sturdy, composed politician in a portrait that would be copied across Europe.

Her lips are pursed. Her hands are poised, a rosary between two fingers. She squints, as if analyzing something. On her head, framing a face as burnished as porcelain, is a supple white wimple. It arches from the crown of her head and encloses her ears and neck; it expresses her fidelity to her late husband and, what’s more, her claim to his political authority. All the validity of her rule lies in that veil. It is piety, and it is power.

Margaret is buried in the Monastère de Brou, a palatial mausoleum she ordered built here in Bourg-en-Bresse, about 280 miles southeast of Paris. And her example serves as the trigger for a sparky and rangy exhibition there that takes a very wide-angle view on one of the most enduring and dispiriting controversies in contemporary French society.