Anne of Austria, Queen of France

Anne was born a Spanish infanta, the eldest daughter of Philip III, and went to France at 14 in the double marriage of 1615 that paired her with Louis XIII and her brother, the future Philip IV, with a French princess. Rubens painted her in Paris around 1622, during the years he was travelling there for the great cycle he was making for Marie de' Medici, the king's mother, at the Luxembourg Palace. She is shown as reigning queen, in a palace setting, against a blue hanging worked with the fleur-de-lis of her husband's house. The portrait never went to a French patron. It stayed in Rubens's own hands until his death in 1640, and turned up soon after in Brussels with the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, who was Anne's younger brother. He sent it to Madrid, to the king of Spain, who was her brother as well.