A Large Family

A Large Family

When I was in primary school, my favorite king was Henry IV. I wasn’t alone in this, and there was nothing original about it. In our history textbook, he came off better than the others, with the Edict of Nantes and a “chicken in every peasant’s pot.” We cursed his assassin, Ravaillac. When I was brought to the Louvre, we had to stand for a long while in front of the Rubens in the Galerie Médecis (Richelieu, room 801). I particularly liked the one of Henry IV’s receiving the portrait of Marie de’ Medici and falling in love, as I hadn’t imagined that it could happen that way. The other day, all of this came back to me when I happened upon this bowl depicting Henry IV and His Family: the queen at his right, a governess at his side presenting him with the young Louis XIII, his companions behind him, and, to his left, Vendôme, the legitimized son of his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées—una grande famiglia (Richelieu, room 521, OA 1351). This ceramic from the school of Bernard Palissy appears very realistic and endearing. It faithfully reproduces a print drawn by Jean Le Clerc and engraved by Léonard Gaultier in 1602: “God, grant that he be like his father in all things / So he may reign as the French Hercules and Mars.” Come to think of it, the scene might have taken place within these very walls, in the king’s apartments of the Louvre, just a short distance away from where we are. And this dish is yet another gift from the collector Sauvageot, Balzac’s Cousin Pons, the patron of the Louvre’s Objets d’Art department.