The Birth of Marie de' Medici

Marie de' Medici ordered these 24 canvases in 1622, two years after she stopped fighting her own son. Louis XIII had had her chief adviser killed in 1617 and sent her to the chateau of Blois. She got out through a window in 1619, raised troops against him, and came to terms in 1620. Back in Paris and installed in her new Luxembourg Palace, she had Rubens paint her life for its gallery as one continuous run of good fortune, beginning before she could speak. This is the second scene in that run. The newborn is handed over to a woman standing for Florence, where Marie was born in 1575, and the bearded figure with the urn below her is the river Arno. Rubens was sent a written programme for each picture and quietly pruned it, cutting the flying Hours down to two.