A Baroque Account of Law by Rubens: A Legal Reading of "The Council of the Gods" from the Marie de' Medici Cycle

The Marie de’ Medici Cycle is a series of twenty-four paintings made by Petrus Paulus Rubens to compose one of the galleries of the Luxembourg palace in Paris, currently exposed in the Rubens’ Gallery in the Louvre Museum. The cycle of paintings was supposed to represent the life of Marie de’ Medici, wife of Henry IV and mother of Louis XIII, exposing her glories as a Queen Regent after the assassination of her husband and picturing her as a clever female sovereign. Thus, the Gallery was designed to be a representation of the monarchy and of the sovereign, in a period of history which lay the foundations of the modern State.