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and in the entablature of the choir of the religious. Although the only evidence of the motif is
from textual sources, the monogram most likely resembled the crowned letter M visible on the
current building’s highly restored façade (fig. 74). 61 The letter was not only intended to recall
Maria de’ Medici and her regal status but it also evoked the Virgin Mary, the queen of heaven
who shared the name of the queen of France. Reinforcing the comparisons was the placement of
a relief of the pietà on the door, destroyed during the French Revolution, evoking the role of both
Marys as mother. 62 As construction drew to a close in 1631, a new allusion to the two queens
was made when the church’s bell was blessed and named Marie.
Marian iconography had consistently been employed in works of art featuring Maria de’
Medici, thus the idea that the queen of France would use her support of the church to equate
herself with the Virgin Mary is not surprising. Indeed as noted by scholars, such imagery ranged
from an engraving in an almanac from 1611 in which the queen mother was placed next to and
touching the Virgin Mary to Rubens’s Medici Cycle in the Luxembourg Palace, which draws
comparisons between the two Marys’ lives. 63 As Deborah Marrow has shown, Maria de’ Medici
had a number of reasons to encourage the association with her patron saint. In addition to being
extremely religious and even considering becoming a nun, the queen mother had since 1610 been
a widow, a status that was perceived to be as chaste as a virgin. 64 Contemporaries recognized
her attachment to the Virgin, writing that every Saturday she visited a place dedicated to her and
that she sought to expand her cult everywhere. 65 The queen mother’s partiality for the Virgin is
clearly expressed in a letter of advice written in 1625 to her daughter Henrietta, in which she
mentions: “Jesus Christ’s Holy Mother, to whom I exhort you to have an especial devotion.” 66
Maria de’ Medici’s personal history and her devotion to the Virgin Mary made the mother of
God an ideal figure for the queen of France to use in creating her own identity.
A new-found status of the Virgin Mary in seventeenth-century France made the mother
of God an especially appropriate model for Maria de’ Medici. Following the Wars of Religion, a
revival of Marian devotion brought about the Virgin’s elevation from a mere intermediary
between God and man to that of an equal to Christ, “seated in the council of the Father.” 67 The
elevation of the Virgin Mary coincided with Maria de’ Medici’s desire upon returning to court in
1621 to regain the power she once wielded as regent. Within a year the queen mother was well
on her way to achieving this goal with Louis XIII’s decision to allow her to join the royal
council. In 1624 she consolidated her power as the king acceded to her demands to place
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