Enrique IV en la batalla de Ivry, 14 de marzo de 1590

In 1621 the widowed queen Marie de' Medici hired Rubens to fill two wings of her Paris palace: one cycle glorifying her own life, a second glorifying her murdered husband, Henry IV of France. She got her own story, 21 canvases, finished and hung. His was never completed. Court intrigue stalled it, and in 1631 Marie was driven into exile, which ended the project for good. This enormous battle scene, nearly seven metres wide, is one of the few large pieces Rubens carried far along before everything fell apart, showing Henry charging at Ivry in 1590. Cosimo III de' Medici bought it decades later, and it has hung in the Uffizi since 1773.