Marie de’ Medici, after Frans Pourbus

Queen of France and Navarre from 1600 to 1610 through her marriage to Henry IV, Marie de Médicis was widowed in 1610 and had to act as regent on behalf of her son Louis XIII until 1614. Whilst historians have regularly criticised her political choices, she nevertheless left her son a kingdom at peace, despite the criticism.

Her place in history does not do justice to the role of Marie de Médicis, the last great queen to raise the status of female royalty to such heights in a monarchy where the Salic Law was intended to relegate her to a secondary position.  Her perfect understanding of the iconographic strategies needed to consolidate her power led her, for example, to commission the ‘Cycle of Marie de Médicis’ ( ), a series of twenty-four paintings by Peter Paul Rubens commissioned in 1621 for the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris. She also took great care over her ceremonial portraits, which were of great importance in diplomatic life.

True to the tradition of patronage upheld by her Florentine family, Marie de’ Medici succeeded in persuading Frans II Pourbus (1569–1622), the renowned Flemish painter who had been working in Italy at the court of Mantua, to settle in France from 1609 onwards. Pourbus then introduced his own conception of the court portrait to France, featuring a faithful rendering of the subject’s features as well as the richness of the garments and the variety of textures, all executed with Flemish precision. Such a degree of pictorial magnificence had never been achieved by previous royal portrait painters, such as Jacob Bunel (1558–1614) or François Quesnel (1543–1616).

In 1617, he painted her portrait, depicting her full-length; it is now held at the Prado Museum in Madrid. This painting, which marked the beginning of an important series of portraits of the queen, served as the direct model for the numerous cropped bust versions.  This portrait is the regent’s final statement at a time when power was slipping from her grasp, as she was in exile in Blois following the Concini affair – the favourite she had attempted to impose at the start of her son Louis XIII’s reign.

In the series of portraits of the regent in mourning attire, Pourbus was required to convey the sovereign’s authority and grandeur. Depicting her in black mourning attire is, in itself, highly significant. In doing so, she alludes to the cloak and ‘mourning pin’ worn by Catherine de’ Medici on the death of Henry II, who had also observed mourning in black, whilst the custom at the French court was to wear white. Consequently, upon the death of Henry III, Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont naturally observed her mourning in white.

Unlike the portrait dated 1612 (Versailles, Musée du Château) or that of 1616 (Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago), which feature a sumptuous open collar as was the custom at the French court, the copy from the Château de Cadillac features a ceremonial ruff, characteristic of early^17th-century Italian fashion, the proportions of which are such that these ruffs must be supported by a wire frame (known as a ‘rebato’) that raises it very high at the nape of the neck. Through this sartorial reference, which emphasises the magnificence of the Italian ruff and the enormous pearls, the political imagery is directly linked to Catherine de’ Medici.

This dynastic glorification follows on from her commission, in the 1620s, of a series of ten paintings from several Florentine artists to depict the exploits of the Medici, intended to adorn the walls of the ‘golden cabinet’ in her apartments at the Luxembourg Palace.

Blaise Ducos, Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569–1622): The Ceremonial Portrait at the Dawn of the Grand Siècle, between the Habsburgs, the Medici and the Bourbons, Paris, Faton, 2011.

Yann Rodier, ‘Marie de Médicis and the Symbolic Representations of a Queen of Peace, or the Art of Making People See and Believe during the Regency (1610–1617)’, Europa Moderna. Journal of History and Iconology No. 2 / 2011. The Post-Henri IV Era. pp. 78–108.