The Wedding by Proxy of Marie de' Medici to King Henri IV

This canvas by **Peter Paul Rubens**, painted between 1622 and 1625 for the cycle devoted to the life of **Marie de' Medici**, depicts the **wedding by proxy** celebrated in Florence on 5 October 1600, where **Roger de Bellegarde** stood in for Henri IV alongside the new queen, in the presence of the cardinal legate. This union, concluded shortly after the annulment of the sterile marriage with Marguerite de Valois and the death of Gabrielle d'Estrées, was meant to secure for the Bourbon crown the male heir it still lacked. Rubens, then a painter at the court of Mantua, personally attended this Florentine ceremony, an experience that would inform, two decades later, his commission for the great pictorial cycle glorifying the queen's life.