FATAL PASSION AT THE LOUVRE

AN ASSINATION AND A COUP D'ÉTAT TOOK PLACE AT THIS LOUVRE ENTRY

(IN 1617)

Eastern entrance of the Louvre palace 

The drama starts with an orphan's loneliness.

The girl who became Queen Marie de Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, grew up in 1580's Florence with a father she revered, a stepmother she hated and no friends.                                                                                                                                                                                               

That isolation explains the influence of an older girl, whom she adored. A carpenter's daughter, Leonora Dori saw Marie as the way to a better life. 

Leonora's advice contributed to Marie's marrying Henri IV of France (in 1600). But her perspicacity failed when she fell in love with dashing Concino Concini, a low-ranking Florentine noble and hustler. He married her for her closeness to Marie. 

Concino Concini / zoom

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The assassination of Henri IV left eight-year old Louis XIII as king and Marie as regent.

(In 1610)

• Elitist and misogynist history credits Concino as the power behind the throne, calling him "intelligent" despite his absurd behavior. *

* On leaving the queen he would adjust his clothing to suggest that they were lovers. He insulted teen-aged Louis by wearing his hat in his presence. It is he that valets copied when they beat up a baker. 

Concini, Leonora Galigai and Marie de Médicis, p. 148 / Internet, no source

• But the real influencer was Leonora, precisely because she was a woman and a servant: She would subtly advise Marie as she had always done, when they were alone and she brushed her hair...

Leonora: Ugly, hysterical and brilliant, pretty-ing up diminishes her

Alain Decaux, source not said

          Notice the gaze (1614) / zoom 

The work on the left shows a woman of disturbing but vigorous appearance, that on the right, a lovely young lady. Historians print the flattering image and in his play about her, Alfred de Vigny calls her "beautiful."

 -- La Maréchal d'Ancre, 1831

• She demanded advantages for Concini and commissions for herself, acquiring jewels, works of art and this palatial residence:

                                                                                                                                                        10 rue de Tournon

Now the headquarters of the Republican guard (the police on horseback), a few minutes from Marie's Luxembourg palace (today the Senate)

• Historians call her "corrupt" because they view the court through modern eyes.

--  "The hysterical Dwarf who ruled France" by Alain Decaux (1977) emphasizes Leonora's corruption,

 "La Galigaï" by Eve de Castro (1990), her friendship with Marie. (Both in French). 

Neither asks how power worked. 

She was a  favori, the person closest to the king, through whom courtiers passed to receive money, honors and positions. But favoris were nobles who shared that bounty with their clans, which in turn distributed them to their followers. The practice maintained the balance between rival families, gave temporary access to power without risking revolt and encouraged staying at the court to intrigue.

Leonora defied that institution. *

* Accounts (all in French) : The hysterical dwarf who ruled France by Alain Decaux, 1977, emphasizes her corruption ; La Galigaï by Eve de Castro, 1990, her friendship with Marie ; The queens of France under the Bourbons: the two regents by Simone Bertière comes closest to an analysis by noticing Concini's lack of the usual allies.   

These studies do not address how power functioned.  

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Concini's assassination

• Leonora felt the hate and implored Concini to retire with her to Florence. But "he wanted to see how far a man's fortune could go." 

-- Richelieu, Memoirs

And since she loved him...

• "I played the child," Louis said later...

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Théodore Cahu, 1901 (a history for children)

"At another time, he became very angry at the queen's ladies in waiting for taking a finch from him. he rolled one of his canons in front of their door and threatened to shoot..."

• ...and while no one bothered with a prince who seemed retarded, he surrounded himself with more perceptive thugs.

• When Concini advanced inattentively toward the drawbridge, his 60 guards behind him, a plotter cried, "In the name of the king, you are under arrest!" "Que, me?" he exclaimed, too surprised to speak French. 

He was shot. 

Same text

Louis had had a horse saddled should he have to flee, and pretended interest in billiards. When a clamor broke out in the courtyard he knew he had won, stepped out on a window sill and famously cried, "At last I am king!"

Same text

• The assassins left the corpse in the church facing the Louvre.

Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois was the royal church, with stained-glass windows of kings. Visit it: You are likely to have it all to yourself. 

• A mob seized it and hung it on pont Neuf bridge, where a Scottish soldier (it is said) tore out the heart — and ate it.

Anonymous print, 1618 / zoom

The third image in the print above

Concini himself had had the scaffold built, to intimidate the population after his valets were lynched.

                                                           

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Leonora's execution:

• She was condemned as a witch * because only sorcery seemed to explain a servant's power over a queen... and because that was the only sentence by which the king might seize her wealth.

* Witches were burned, and the flames in the image below show how her body ended. But as a noble (she had purchased her title) she was decapitated. 

Seventeenth-century engraving, zoom

• Her last words: "So many people to see a poor woman die!"   

-- Cited by Richelieu, Memoirs

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Marie's sad end

• She was exiled. Richelieu * accompanied her and never forgot the sight of Concini's mutilated body, a warning of how quickly power can become disaster.

* An ally of Concini, he was disgraced too.

Maurice Leloi

Her convoy is about to cross pont Neuf on the way to exile.

• He took Leonora's place as counsel, helped Marie regain a degree of power and betrayed her.

• She was exiled again and died almost penniless (in Cologne, 1642). 

An enigmatic detail

• At the time of her ephemeral return to power (in 1621-1630), Marie commissioned Rubens to paint her story (in 1624-1626). Every detail is political and as an important member of her suite, Leonora should appear prominently in this image of Marie's arrival in Marseilles...

     The Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseilles (upper level) by Rubens / zoom

She arrives in France to marry Henri IV.

• But the women to Marie's left and right are family members. Is Leonora the person behind the queen and is the man whose profile is seen in the background Concini? 

Most figures in the series resemble their portraits: These don't.

Leonora's memory was too explosive to be openly evoked.

-- Heroic Deeds and Mystic Figures, a New Reading of Rubens' Life of Marie de Medici

by R.F. Millen and R.E. Wolf, 1989

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Rubens painted a happy king:

Louis XIII  toward 1524, exhibited at the Senate in 2019

Louis XIII was notoriously morose but this portrait, the only one of a royal that Rubens painted from life, suggests a cheerful early reign. 

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The story's wider interest 

• Accounts may leave out the inconvenient.

• Assuming that other societies function like ours makes correctly interpreting their events impossible.  

• Imposing an outsider as favori shows growing royal might.

   

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Next,

Palais Royal, a world of its own