A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment by Stella Ghervas;David Armitage;

Author:Stella Ghervas;David Armitage; [Armitage, Stella Ghervas and David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350179806
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2020-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

PEACE AND SOVEREIGNTY

During the seventeenth century, European monarchs found it desirable to represent themselves as rulers who pursued peace. Allegorical language conveyed these meanings, with symbols generously deployed in public images that reinforced the notion of the benevolent ruler. Rubens, once again, was an innovator with this genre, developing techniques and conventions that would inform official royal portraiture and images of rulers within decorative cycles across the courts of Europe for the next two centuries. In 1622 Rubens began the cycle of twenty-four paintings that would document the life of Marie de’ Medici, dowager Queen of France and mother of Louis XIII, to decorate her newly-built private residence, the Luxembourg Palace. The commission had both personal and political purpose. According to the dictates of Salic law, a woman could not rule France in her own right. When Henri IV was assassinated, Marie de’ Medici became regent until her son was old enough to rule on his own. Her regency was marked by political intrigue and revolt by the princes of blood and Nobles of the Sword. Her son eventually exiled the dowager queen to Blois, in an attempt to assert his authority and independence, early on in his majority. The central point of conflict was her support of the Spanish Habsburgs, an abandonment of the traditional anti-Habsburg foreign policy of the French. To secure this alliance between France and Spain, she arranged the marriages of her children, Louis XIII to Anne of Austria and Elisabeth to the future Philip IV. This exchange of the princesses was a cornerstone of Marie de’ Medici’s self image, as she wanted to see her children seated on all the thrones of Europe. It was also a significant effort to secure the prospect of peace, by brokering alliances through marriage, which she achieved again with the marriage of her daughter Henrietta Maria to Charles I of Spain. It was an explicitly female approach to the objectives of diplomacy, good government and statecraft, which would be followed by other powerful women who ruled during the eighteenth century, namely Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria.9

Rubens was thus presented with a difficult task. He was commissioned, as his contract stated, to paint the “highly illustrious life and heroic deeds” of a woman who was a disgraced regent in need of repairing her relationship with the king (as quoted in Millen and Wolf 1989: 5). Straightforward vindication was an impossibility. There was a sensitivity between mother and son that had to be carefully negotiated, as did the difficulty of assigning the more masculine associations of illustriousness and heroism to a woman. The extraordinary interpretive complexities of the Medici cycle are part of Rubens’ solution to the specific challenges of the commission, aided by his characteristic bravura brushstrokes and seductive use of color. The artist’s powers of visual persuasion were mobilized not only to restore the reputation of Marie de’ Medici in the present, but also to secure the legacy of her queenship for posterity. At the same time, as the consummate diplomat artist, Rubens sought to advance his own agenda in promoting peace.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.