Maria de' Medici's flight to Blois (sketch)

A king's mother slipping away by night from the château where her own son had confined her was not an episode anyone would choose to hang in a gallery of triumphs. Yet it was on the list for Marie de' Medici's gallery, and in this design Rubens found a way round the indignity. The museum points out that the ladder, the actual means of escape, appears only discreetly at the right edge. The middle of the panel belongs to the queen, who receives the homage of the followers come to meet her, so the fugitive looks more like a sovereign holding court. As so often in the cycle she is cast as a victim who, whatever the slanders, acts for the good of the state. The escape took place in February 1619, and by the end of April mother and son had signed a first settlement at Angoulême.