The Birth of the Dauphin at Fontainebleau, 27 September 1601

The event in the title happened in 1601: at the palace of Fontainebleau, Marie de' Medici gave birth to a son, the future Louis XIII, and France finally had a legitimate male heir. Rubens painted the scene more than 20 years later, around 1622, as one of 24 canvases the queen commissioned for her new Luxembourg Palace in Paris. By then she and that same son had spent years at odds, and the whole cycle was designed to tell her life as a run of triumphs. So there is almost nothing domestic here. Marie is enthroned like a goddess, Justice and other figures attend the newborn, and a cornucopia spills fruit that stands for the children still to come. The infant who secures the dynasty is handed straight into the arms of allegory.