Le Couronnement de Marie de Médicis à Saint-Denis

The coronation happened on 13 May 1610 in the abbey church of Saint-Denis. Marie de' Medici had been married to Henri IV for ten years without ever being crowned, and the ceremony was finally arranged because the king was about to leave on campaign. The next afternoon he was stabbed to death in his carriage in a jammed Paris street, and the crown she had worn for one day made her regent of France. Some 12 years later she commissioned Rubens to paint her life for the gallery of her new palace on the left bank, 24 canvases in three years. Most of that cycle is allegory, with gods and personifications escorting her through events. This scene simply happened, and Rubens filled the church with recognisable faces from the court, the eight-year-old dauphin among them.