L'incoronazione di Inês de Castro nel 1361

Comte showed this at the Paris Salon of 1849, when French painters had a strong appetite for grim medieval legend, and few stories were grimmer than this one. It comes from 14th-century Portugal. Prince Pedro secretly loved Inês de Castro, and after his father's men had her killed, he became king and, the legend says, ordered her body exhumed, dressed in royal robes and set on a throne to be crowned queen. Comte paints the moment the court files past the seated corpse to kiss her hand. The real Inês died in 1355, and Pedro had her reburied in a carved stone tomb at the monastery of Alcobaça, laid so that, by one tradition, on Judgment Day the two would rise and see each other first.