Artist: Peter Paul Rubens
This painting depicts the arrival of The Queen of France Marie de' Medici, dressed in resplendent silver, accompanied by the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and the Duchess of Mantua, as she disembarks on a red parapet. A soldier in a blue cloak patterned with gold fleur-de-lis to signify France, opens his arms to greet her. Above her, a mythological winged figure, representing Fame with two trumpets, heralds her arrival to marry King Henry IV. The diagonal of the red parapet that extends from the gold prow of the ship creates a sense of movement and it also divides the painting into two different worlds; the elegant and refined world of nobility above, and the classical mythological scene below. Three Greek Naiads, goddesses of the sea who ensured safe voyages, fill the lower frame. To their left, Neptune with a gray beard holds out his arm to calm the sea, while next to him, the god Fortune leans against the boat while steering it. These mythological figures lend grandeur and allegorical meaning to the Queen's arrival, but, at the same time, the three nude Naiads overshadow the event with their dynamic sensuality.
Rubens' masterful compositions that combined a wealth of history and allegory with depictions of signature moments in scenes of visual exuberance were much in demand with the nobility. The unabashed sensuality of his full-figured female nudes was also innovative, and so distinctive they are still dubbed as "Rubenesques." As art critic Mark Hudson wrote, "He imported the proto-baroque painting of Titian and Michelangelo and the gritty realism of Caravaggio into Northern Europe, fusing them into a physically gigantic, sensually overloaded, triumphantly Catholic art."
This was one of 24 paintings commissioned by Marie de' Medici in 1621, after the assassination of her husband Henry IV, to create a cycle to immortalize her life. She may also have been motivated to portray her rightful standing, as tensions between the ruling factions in France and a "foreign" queen had led to her banishment from the court in 1617. Rubens, the most famous painter in Northern Europe, was drawn to the commission as it gave him permission to explore a secular subject, and one that he could inform with allegorical and mythological treatments. Art historian Roger Avermaete wrote of the work, "He surrounded her [Marie de' Medici] with such a wealth of appurtenances that at every moment she was very nearly pushed into the background. Consider, for example, the Disembarkation at Marseilles, where everyone has eyes only for the voluptuous Naiads, to the disadvantage of the queen who is being received with open arms by France."
Ruben's work was influential upon artists like Velázquez and informed the Rococo artists that followed including Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher. He also influenced Eugène Delacroix, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso. Though less known, his landscapes also influenced J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, and Thomas Gainsborough. As Mark Hudson wrote, "From Rembrandt, Watteau and Delacroix to Cézanne and Picasso, the Rubenesque sensibility runs strong and deep through Western art."