Portrait of Marie de' Medici

In May 1610 a knife ended Henry IV of France in a halted Paris carriage, and the crown passed to his nine-year-old son. Real power went to the boy's mother, Marie de' Medici, who ruled as regent. This portrait shows her in that role, in her coronation robes: ermine, blue velvet worked with gold, and a stomacher of pearls and jewels cut in the shape of the fleur-de-lys, the badge of the house she now governed. Pourbus was her own court painter, and he sets down every stone. She had come to France from Florence, daughter of Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. Today the painting hangs in the Uffizi, the gallery her own Medici family built, in the city where she was born.