Ancestral Trails 2016 » Marie de MEDICI (1575-1642)

Personal data Marie de MEDICI 

• She was born on April 26, 1575 in Château de Fontainebleau, Fontainebleau, France.
• She died in the year 1642 in Brussels, Brabant, Flanders, Belgium, she was 66 years old.

  Died in exile

• A child of Francesco de MEDICI and Joanna von HABSBURG

Household of Marie de MEDICI

She is married to Henri de FRANCE.

They got married on October 5, 1600, she was 25 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Christine Marie de FRANCE  1606-1663 
2. Henrietta Maria de FRANCE  1609-1669 
3. Elizabeth de FRANCE  1602-1644 
4. Gaston Jean Baptiste d'ORLEANS  1608-1660 
5. Louis de FRANCE  1601-1643 

Notes about Marie de MEDICI

Marie de' Medici became the second wife to King Henry IV of France in a marriage by proxy on 5 October 1600 by the power invested in her uncle, Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany. When Henry was assassinated in 1610, Louis XIII, his son and successor to the throne, was only eight years old. Louis' mother, Marie, acted as his regent as commanded by the Frankish Salic law in case of an infant ruler. However, even after Louis came of age at thirteen in 1614, the queen continued ruling in his stead. In 1617, Louis XIII finally decided to take governing matters in his own hands at the age of fifteen and the queen was exiled to Blois.

Louis and his mother were not reconciled for over four years, and finally in 1621 Marie was permitted to return to Paris. Upon her return, Marie focused on building and decorating the Luxembourg Palace, an enormous undertaking in which Peter Paul Rubens played a key role. Rubens, then court painter to the Duchy of Mantua under Vincenzo I Gonzaga, had first met Marie at her proxy wedding in Florence in 1600. In 1621, Marie de' Medici commissioned Rubens to paint two large series depicting the lives of herself and her late husband, Henry IV, to adorn both wings of the first floor of the Luxembourg Palace. The first series of 21 canvases depicts the life of Marie in largely allegorical terms, and was finished by the end of 1624, to coincide with the celebrations surrounding the wedding of her daughter, Henrietta Maria to Charles I of England on 11 May 1625. The cycle of paintings dedicated to the life of Henry IV was never completed, although some preliminary sketches survive. The fact that the Henry IV series was not realized can be attributed in part to Marie de' Medici being permanently banned from France by her son in 1631. She escaped to Brussels, and later died in exile in 1642 in the same house that the Peter Paul Rubens's family had occupied more than fifty years prior.

Do you have supplementary information, corrections or questions with regards to Marie de MEDICI?
The author of this publication would love to hear from you!

Timeline Marie de MEDICI

Click on the names for more info. Symbols used:  grandparents    parents    brothers/sisters    children