Public Felicity Triumphant over Dangers

In 1624 Orazio Gentileschi, then about 60, came to Paris to work for Marie de' Medici, the queen mother, who was furnishing her new Luxembourg Palace. In those same years Rubens was delivering the 24 canvases of her life for the palace's gallery.

Gentileschi's part was smaller and allegorical. The young woman seated on a balustrade against the sky is Public Felicity, the happiness of the realm, triumphing over dangers. She holds a caduceus, the herald's staff of peace and concord, and under her arm are crowns and sceptres, one crown marked with the French fleur-de-lis. The picture is read as the queen's own survival of the troubles of her regency.

Old inventories listed it as anonymous, and for a time it was given to the French painter Jean-Laurent Mosnier before it was recognised as Gentileschi's. After the royal collection took it over, it spent years on loan to French embassies, in Berlin from 1905 to 1908 and in Vienna until 1958.