Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589), Queen of France
1565
Catherine de' Medici, the powerful Queen Mother of France, stares out with an uncompromising gaze in this striking 1565 portrait by François Clouet. Dressed in the severe black widow's weeds she wore for decades after her husband's death, her stark white ruff collar frames a face that ruled France through decades of religious wars. Clouet, the master court painter, captured her not with flattery, but with a raw, almost unsettling realism that reveals the iron will behind the crown. This unvarnished look became the definitive image of one of history's most controversial and formidable female rulers.
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