ABSTRACT
If there is a single image that captures the manifold connotations of Mane de Medicis's grief at the death of Henri IV, it is Peter Paul Rubens's account of the politics of 1610, entitled The Apotheosis of Henri IV and the Assumption of the Regency. The majority of emblems and allegorical tableaux of the Lyon program treated royal marriage as an institution of public law. In 1600, anticipation of the king's connubial bliss inspired his subjects to develop arching comparisons between his amatory and heroic accomplishments and those of classic mythology, where gods were as victorious in the bedroom as on the battlefield. Throughout her 10-year marriage to Henri IV, lawyers remained the most impassioned defenders of Marie's authority as consort and royal mother; some of the evidence is worth charting. Artists also employed topoi of marital devotion as a strategy of representation supporting the political basis of the regency government.
