The Presentation in the Temple

In 1643 Louis XIII died, and his widow, Anne of Austria, became regent for a four-year-old king. Within months she moved from the Louvre to the Palais-Royal, the palace Cardinal Richelieu had left to the crown, and there she had a private oratory hung with scenes from the life of the Virgin. Around 1644 and 1645 she called on the best painters in Paris at once. Simon Vouet painted the Assumption over the altar, Philippe de Champaigne the Marriage of the Virgin and the Annunciation, Jacques Stella the Birth of the Virgin, and Sébastien Bourdon this Presentation in the Temple along with a Flight into Egypt.

Bourdon built the scene as a pyramid, with figures in the foreground that push the main group further back. Henri Sauval, a chronicler of Paris, reports that connoisseurs argued over which picture in the room was best, and most gave the prize to Bourdon's other panel, the Flight. The pictures of the oratory are now divided between Paris, Reims, London, New York and Lille.