Das Schicksal der Maria de' Medici

Marie de' Medici ordered 24 large canvases for the gallery of her new Luxembourg palace in Paris, and Rubens delivered them in 1625. She had been regent of France after her husband Henri IV was stabbed to death in 1610. Her son Louis XIII then had her favourite shot dead on the drawbridge of the Louvre in 1617 and sent her off to the castle of Blois, and she got out of a window on a rope ladder and raised troops against him. They had patched things up by the time the pictures went on the wall.

None of that appears in the gallery. Rubens told her life through gods instead. This canvas opens the series, before she is even born, with the three Fates spinning out the thread of her life while Jupiter and Juno look on from a cloud.