Portrait of Margherita de' Medici as Saint Margaret of Antioch

Margherita de' Medici had left Florence in October 1628 to marry Odoardo Farnese and take up her place as duchess of Parma. This portrait was painted in the year that followed, and the Italian state catalogue ties the choice of saint to what was happening to her then. She was expecting her first child, and Margaret of Antioch was the saint women called on in childbirth. The name was hers as well, which made the guise an easy one to reach for. Sustermans put her on a canvas nearly two metres high and painted her full length, at the scale of a state portrait. Her son Ranuccio was born in September 1630. By then a copy of this picture, made by Giovanni Leonardo Henner, had already gone to the Spanish court, which is one of the reasons the catalogue keeps the original in 1629.