The Apotheosis of Henri IV and the Proclamation of the Regency of Marie de Médicis

Rubens took a hard commission here. In 1610 King Henri the Fourth of France was stabbed to death in his carriage on a Paris street, and his widow, Marie de' Medici, became regent the very next day. About ten years later she asked Rubens for a cycle of 24 huge canvases for her new palace, telling her life story in the grandest possible terms. This is the central one, and it had to manage that awkward join. On the left the murdered king is carried up to the gods, already half a myth. On the right Marie sits in black and accepts the globe of the state while the nobles look on. Rubens paints the death and the handover as one rising movement, so the eye slides from the dying king straight into the new regency. The full set of 24 now hangs together in a single gallery of the Louvre.