Medvedev Dmitriy: http://www.proza.ru/2012/08/12/1198
About a year after Louis XIII’s coming of age, Marie finally makes an attempt to do something actually useful in politics, and strengthens the blood relations between the royal houses of France and Spain, exchanging tit for tat, when the bosom-rich Anna is traded for the tat-dressed Isabella. That way, by wedding the princesses to the future kings, Medici planned to end the endless French-Spanish wars.
The Spanish clown prince Phillip couldn’t care less about what happened, and the young French king with the somewhat queer tendencies wasn’t even asked about his opinion regarding what kind of relations His Highness- now-Majesty prefers. Besides, at that time, the only same sex relations permitted were screwing someone over a deal. So, blessed by the gods, the mortals marched to the sounds of yet unwritten Wedding March by Mendelssohn: the men as the masterpieces of creation and the women as those who are about to master those pieces.
According to Rubens, it was predetermined already at the “Council of the Gods”, which was hanging at the hall next door. But while the whole cycle underlines the superiority of Virtue over War, no real peace took place in the lifetime of the abovementioned monarchs. This again serves to point out the eminent failure of any promising project undertaken by Marie de Medici.
But the artist faced a specific task of immortalizing the historic event, which glorified the queens’ wisdom and emphasizing her insight. So, taking himself in one hand and the brushes in the other, Peter Paul fills the image with posh and mannerism, with flowers and angels with dayflies’ wings, which enjoy the golden rain (no urolagnia meant). One might feel like adding a soundtrack a-la-Bach, but apparently it didn’t work out, so we stayed with reality a-la-blech.
At the center of the canvas he has set two corseted princesses, each deserving separate attention, so I’ll allow myself to go off-track again. On the recto, Anna of Austria is presented, already given as a present by the verso set Spain to France, which already turned her back to the world. The same Anna, known to most of us through the plotline of the “Three Musketeers” by Dumas, was a modest girt without extreme ambitions, colorful oddities or issues about breast size. Well, no breasts- no issues, although, ironically, she died of a cancer in that very undersized organ. But even this similarity to the male body didn’t attract Louis very much, so it’s no wonder that the stork didn’t make it to the castle until 20 years later. Finally, Louis managed to raise something at her which wasn’t a hand.
Elisabeth of Bourbon, on the other hand, seems to be in tune with her spouse, bearing with his “don’t care”, and was quite consistent in her chronic pregnancy. But off her children, only her youngest, eighth daughter Marie Theresa lived (her survival despite the odds is the reason they name heroines after her in the Spanish novellas), so the only one to be mother-hen’d by her was the baby of her mother in law. Also, as opposed to her sister-in-law, the French queen of Spain took it upon herself to mind the family valuables, which eventually led to her death. She could really take a leaf from Anna’s book, which cardinally annoyed only the Cardinal*. But it’ll be ages before Tetris will be invented to show that the errors tend to pile up, while the achievements just vanish (I mean politic failures and dying children). So there were no “Three toreadors” written about Elisabeth, and by today not many remember her name.
But let’s return to our Bourbon at another time and look at the painting in search for the protagonist- meaning the organizer of the main event herself- Marie de Medici. Where is the astounding woman, who could make not only her husband quake in his boots, but also the whole of France? The time is just perfect to depict the passing of the gathered experience to the young maidens- so they’ll know just what it feels like. But it won’t be the first time for Rubens to forget to add an important blue-blooded person**, so the lack of representation of the acting person is up to the fantasy of the viewer.
I, personally, prefer to think that Marie, after taking a look around, waved her hands and with a cry of “Oj vej, where are the girls’ lays? Taking a roll in the hay?” (Pardon my French) and took off to look for the missing Messieurs.
*Anna, like a cactus, just didn’t rub Cardinal de Richelieu right.
** At the “Coronation in Saint Denis” the king was added later.