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Medici’s patronage of the Religious of St. Elizabeth from reaching a broad group of spectators.
Helping to counter the limited exposure was the anonymous print. Engravings such as this
belonged to the category of seventeenth-century French prints recording historical events.
Typically engraved and sold shortly after the specific occasion, the prints depicted scenes
ranging from royal weddings and coronations to the signing of treatises and military victories. 90
Although recently built architecture was a feature of some examples, such as the 1612 engraving
of the Place Royale showing the celebrations in honor of Louis XIII’s engagement to Anne of
Austria, prints depicting the foundation stone of recently begun churches appear to be rare (fig.
80). To my knowledge, the only other existing example in Paris at this time is the one completed
for Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites. 91
In addition to following the same format, the prints from Notre-Dame-de-Pitié and Saint-
Louis-des-Jésuites share a number of striking similarities, including the tendency of the medals
to mirror one another in their formula. In both prints one of the images in the upper register is a
portrait of the church’s patron saint, specifically St. Louis and the Virgin Mary. The others on
this level are intended to evoke the actual building: the medal for Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites
achieves this by depicting the proposed design for the façade while the one for Notre-Dame-de-
Pitié accomplishes it through an image of the mourning Virgin Mary, which recalls the
dedication of the church. The similarities are carried over to the medallic faces at the bottom,
where a profile portrait of the royal patron is shown in each print’s lower left corner.
Compounding the parallel features is that both portraits of Louis XIII and Maria de’ Medici are
placed below images representing the holy figure after whom they were named.
Typical of prints for the period, both images had a specific purpose beyond merely
recording an historical event, a strategy which is hinted at through the choice of language. 92 All
of the text on the print from Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites is written in Latin, meaning that in addition
to copying the exact lettering from the medals and the inscription, the engraver also used the
Roman language for the explanatory text. By using Latin, the Jesuit print restricted its audience
to priests and scholars, specifically the Ultramontanists to whom Louis XIII most directed his
message to accept the absolute authority of the king. Conversely the example for Notre-Damede-Pitié
only used French, intentionally translating the text from the medals and the inscription to
the common language. This arrangement allowed the print to reach a much broader group,
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