She dismissed most of her late husband’s ministers and relied mainly on her maid and best friend’s husband Concino Concini for advice. He became her most important counselor, from whom she sought direction in all governmental affairs.
Though Marie de Medici is known to have brought in a lot of Italian artists and focused on elevating the arts, she often displeased the French public, who considered her too lavish in spending court money and resented her reliance on her Italian counselor.
She also developed a close friendship with the painter Pierre Paul Rubens who painted a lovely series of portraits of her now housed in the Louvre.
Finding the Louvre palace too dark to stay in, and holding a lot of unpleasant memories, Marie wanted a palace of her own. She dreamed of constructing one that would be full of light and would resemble the Pitti Palace where she had grown up.
With her own money, she bought land from a Count Luxembourg in the heart of left bank and began construction of her new palace in 1615.
Louis and his mother never had a close relationship. I would imagine that Marie, having lost her own mother so young, probably was not able to mother her children with much warmth and affection, as she had little given and modeled to her during her childhood.
The other aspect to consider was that after the death of his father, whom Louis adored, he resented his mother’s attention and closeness to her Italian counselor, and probably felt displaced in whatever affection she could display. This emotional neglect of her son caused Louis to develop tremendous resentment to him and further alienation from his mother. (Read more.)
From The Monstrous Regiment of Women:
Just the day before the king's death, Marie de' Medici had been crowned queen of France in a splendid ceremony. Despite his original "command" that his queen "not meddle in affairs of state," the coronation ceremony had taken place so that Marie's position as regent of France could be strengthened while the king undertook a military campaign in the Netherlands.
Within two hours of her husband's assassination, Marie placed her children under guard to safeguard their security, secured the streets around the Louvre palace, and appeared before the Parlement of Paris to have her regency acknowledged.
In conducting herself as queen regent, Marie decided to model herself on her predecessor and cousin Catherine de' Medici; she aimed for conciliation and appeasement. "Her task," as A. Lloyd Moote defines it, was "avoiding internal turmoil and external danger." Her "success in achieving those twin aims must, in the immediate setting, be considered a major achievement."
After the rivalries and tensions that had culminated in her husband's assassination, the queen's regency was at first welcomed by opposing factions and began peacefully. Marie herself approached her new role as regent with a measure of confidence and optimism; "I can call myself very fortunate and quite consoled because of the good order and great tranquility that begin to be seen in the affairs of this realm" she wrote to her sister three months after her husband's death. But her optimism proved to be ill-founded.
Unlike her model, Marie was not a success as regent. Religious unrest continued to be a problem, and relationships with foreign powers were uneasy. To complicate matters further, her relationship with her son the king was tense. Resentful of the humiliations she had endured during her husband's life, she abandoned his counselors and friends, turning for support to her Italian courtiers, to Rome, and to her Habsburg relatives
For her principal advisor she looked to her friend Leonora's husband Concino Concini, whom she arranged to have appointed maréchal of France, an appointment that "conferred [on him] the second-highest military honor in France."Unlike Henry IV, Louis XIII had been raised a Catholic, like Marie herself; to defuse religious tensions, Marie acted to "curb inflammatory rhetoric" on both sides of the religious debate and "republished the agreement of Nantes in 1612, 1614, and twice in 1615." (Read more.)
From Women of Style:
Uninterested and inexperienced in politics, Marie was extremely stubborn and wasn’t lacking ambition although some say she was lacking a better judgment since she relied on her maid and childhood friend Leonora Galigai and her unscrupulous husband Concino Concini to rule.
Concini used Marie to become a Marshal of France even though he never fought a battle and influenced her to dismiss Henry’s able minister the Duke of Sully and open doors for a larger influence of the Roman Catholic Church. Half Habsburg herself, Marie abandoned traditional anti-Habsburg French foreign policy and arranged the marriage between her daughter Elisabeth and the future King Philip IV of Spain.
The weakness of royal authority and the fact that they had Italian outsider on the court and at the royal council, led to the rebellion of princes and prominent nobles of the kingdom which Marie tried to pacify by buying them off, draining the treasury in vain. She also tried to strengthen her rule by adding Armand Jean du Plessis, later known as Cardinal Richelieu to her councils.
During her reign, Marie undertook several large art projects, including building and furnishing of the Palais du Luxembourg, she called “Palais Medicis”. Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, whom Marie met around the time of her wedding, was commissioned to create paintings glorifying her life and reign and this series of 21 paintings along with portraits of Marie and her family is now known as the Marie de Medici cycle and hangs in the Louvre.
The task of painting Marie’s life and triumphs was a difficult one since Rubens had to create 21 paintings about a woman whose life consisted of marriage, giving birth to six children, one of which died in infancy and political scandals that made any literal description of the events too controversial to execute without angering someone in government.
Rubens, already established as an exceptional painter, turned to classical literature and artistic traditions and used allegorical representations to glorify the queen’s achievements and sensitively illustrate the less favorable events in Marie’s life. He painted extravagant images of the Queen Mother surrounded by ancient goods. (Read more.)
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