Portrait of Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587)

In 1625, when Marie de' Medici's new gallery in the Luxembourg Palace was finished, this portrait hung above one of its two small entrance doors. Rubens painted 24 canvases for that room, 21 scenes from her life along the long walls and three portraits on the entrance wall, her parents over the doors and Marie herself in triumph above the fireplace between them. This is Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who died in 1587, when she was 12. Rubens never saw him. He worked from a Florentine likeness such as the one Scipione Pulzone painted in 1585, and added ducal ermine and the red cross of the Order of Saint Stephen, founded by Cosimo, the sitter's own father. In May 2026 the gallery, room 801, closed for an on-site restoration expected to last about four years.