Portrait of Maria de' Medici

On 19 August 1606 Pourbus wrote to the Duke of Mantua, whose court painter he was at the time, to report that he had portrayed the queen of France from life. He was in Paris on Mantuan business and would not move to the French court for another three years. This small bust of Marie de' Medici belongs to those first encounters, 1605 or 1606, and the museum's description of it reads like a list written in front of the canvas. The bust turned three quarters to the left, the square neckline, the high lace collar, the hair gathered up above the head, clasps of gems, ropes of pearls, a pearl earring, a curtain behind, small carnations. Florence keeps several of his portraits of this sitter, most of them full-length pictures of state. This is the smallest of them, 83 centimetres tall, in the Hall of the Iliad.