Catherine de' Medici in Widow's Dress, by François Clouet
Catherine de' Medici painted by François Clouet around 1580, in the widow's cap and black she wore for the last thirty years of her life. The mourning was genuine and it was also useful: it fixed her public identity as the dead king's widow and the living kings' mother, which was the ground her authority stood on.
Henry II died in 1559. Catherine wore black until her own death in 1589, and she was painted in it repeatedly — by Clouet, whose workshop supplied the French court with the images by which its members were known. A queen consort had no constitutional claim to govern France; a queen mother acting for a minor son did. The costume in this portrait is not incidental to the politics of the Wars of Religion. It is the argument. The panel is in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. See how she became an architect of influence in the French Wars of Religion.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
