Portrait of Claude of Valois, Duchess of Lorraine

The young woman here was a granddaughter of the Medici, though she lived her life in France and Lorraine. Claude of Valois was the second daughter of King Henri the Second of France and Catherine de' Medici, and by most accounts her mother's favourite child. In 1559, at just 11 years old, she was married to Charles, Duke of Lorraine, one thread in the web of alliances Catherine spun across Europe through her children. Claude went on to bear nine children of her own and died at 27. This portrait was painted around 1600, a generation after her death, for the Medici's own collection in Florence, where the family gathered likenesses of relatives who had married into the ruling houses of Europe.