Of all the masterpieces in the Louvre, none has a more appropriate home than the 24 paintings glorifying the life and reign of Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France.
Painted by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, the series known as the “Marie de’ Medici Cycle” (1622–1625), are among the greatest artistic achievements of their age. Completed when the Louvre was at the height of its importance as a royal residence, the paintings celebrate the queen mother during the reign of her son, King Louis XIII, when France was on the verge of becoming Europe’s greatest power.
For this monumental work of the Baroque era to have been commissioned by a member of the most celebrated family of Renaissance artistic patrons was a similarly appropriate continuation of tradition. Two hundred years earlier, Marie’s ancestor Giovanni de Medici helped launch the Renaissance through his patronage of Brunelleschi and Donatello. Lorenzo the Magnificent, perhaps the single most important Renaissance patron and the first to patronize Michelangelo, was her great-great-uncle. Her grandfather, Grand Duke Cosimo I, was patron of the eminent art historian Giorgio Vasari and his Academy of the Arts of Drawing. Popes Leo X and Clement VII, two of the most notable papal supporters of the arts, were also members of the Medici family….