Henri IV and the Abbess of Montmartre

This painting by **Pierre-Auguste Vafflard**, exhibited at the 1824 Salon, depicts the meeting between **Henri IV** and **Marie-Catherine de Beauvilliers**, a young nun of the Montmartre abbey where the king established his artillery and lodging during the siege of Paris from May 1590 onward. Barely sixteen years old at the time of this military occupation of the convent, Marie de Beauvilliers is traditionally described by historians as one of the king's mistresses during this period; a few years later, in 1597-1598, Henri IV had her appointed abbess of Montmartre, a position she held with rigour for nearly sixty years, including restoring monastic discipline there. Painted more than two centuries after the events, this canvas belongs to the nineteenth-century taste for gallant anecdotes interwoven with the kingdom's grand history.