Prints from Rubens' Medici Cycle

Peter Paul Rubens
(Flemish, 1577-1640)
Jean-Marc Nattier
French (1685-1766)
Henri IV délibére sur son futur mariage
(Henry IV deliberates on his future marriage)
from Prints from Rubens's Medici Cycle
1710
engraving
(81.268.10)

Marie de' Medici, a Florentine princess born in 1575 and married to King Henri IV of France, commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to paint a series of twenty-four canvases commemorating important events in her life. The resulting Medici Cycle, installed in 1625 in the Palace of Luxembourg, achieved great renown. So famed was the series that in 1710, King Louis XIV hired Jean-Marc Nattier, a prominent French engraver, to oversee the making of engravings after the paintings for international distribution. The exhibition, Prints from Rubens' Medici Cycle, presented this entire series of prints in three segments during a twelve-month period.

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