By Sherry Mi, Class of 2026

Description: Essay for the Religion, Art, and Social Change class in Spring 2024, an art analysis on “Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici” by Peter Paul Rubens (won a Silver Key in the 24-25 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards)

Peter Paul Rubens, Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, 1621-1625.

Despite the entrenched patriarchal order in 17th-century France, Marie de’ Medici, a Florentine noblewoman and Queen to King Henri IV, emerged as an influential political leader  (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). She commissioned Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens to illustrate her life and accomplishments, utilizing the grandeur of 24 large-scale paintings to advocate for her leadership and political power. She later displayed the painting cycle in the Luxembourg Palace to reinforce her authority (Hartt). In the fourth painting of the cycle, The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, Rubens retrospects Marie’s love relationship with Henri IV to glorify their union. Using Baroque artistic conventions of intense dynamism, allegorical images, and earthly motifs, Rubens ultimately justifies her rise to power.

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