The Happiness of the Regency

In 1625 one subject was dropped from the cycle. It showed the queen leaving Paris for Blois in 1617, sent away after her son's men had killed her favourite, Concino Concini, and that memory had become too delicate to hang. Rubens, then in Paris, painted this replacement on the spot. On 13 May 1625 he wrote to his friend Peiresc, a scholar in Provence, that the new picture touched on no particular affair of state and pointed at no one, and so it had been very well received. Had the rest been left entirely to him, he added, there would have been less scandal and grumbling. Marie sits enthroned as Justice, holding the scales. At the left, Saturn, old Time, ushers in a golden age, and at her feet small cupids standing for the arts push down Ignorance, Slander and Envy.