The Wedding of Henri de Navarre in the Salle des Caryatides

This painting depicts the wedding festivities of **Henri de Navarre**, the future Henri IV, with **Marguerite de Valois**, celebrated in the **Salle des Caryatides** of the Louvre palace on 18 August 1572. While the religious ceremony had taken place that same morning on the forecourt of Notre-Dame — Henri, having remained Protestant, being unable to attend the mass celebrated inside — the wedding celebrations continued in the royal apartments of the Louvre, gathering the entire court for what was meant to seal the reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. This union, concluded barely six days before the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, would acquire a tragic resonance in hindsight, the Louvre festivities preceding by only a few days one of the darkest episodes of the Wars of Religion.