The Entry in Paris by Henry IV

When Rubens worked on this small oak panel, around 1628, the woman who had commissioned it was running out of time. Marie de' Medici, widow of King Henry IV of France, had already received from him a cycle of paintings on her own life for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. A second gallery was meant to celebrate her husband's victories, and this sketch is one of the designs for it. It shows March 1594, when Henry, a Protestant who had converted to Catholicism the year before, was finally able to enter Paris. The armoured king stands on the left, taking the key of the city from a kneeling woman who embodies Paris. In November 1630 Marie lost her power struggle with Cardinal Richelieu, and within a year she had fled France. The Henry series was abandoned, and two of its large canvases, begun but never finished, are now in the Uffizi in Florence.