Attributed to Gioffredo Bosisio

Attributed to Gioffredo Bosisio
Catherine de' Medici Persuading Charles IX to Order the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Inscribed KE surmounted by a crown, the king's monogram (from Greek Karolos Enatos, Charles Ninth) on the table base (lr) and on the wall (ul)
Oil on canvas
28 3/4 x 36 inches (73 x 91.5 cm)
Provenance:
Private collection, Florida
Purchased at Beechwood Gallery, Tampa, as by Gioffredo Bosisio
The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre was an organized series of assassinations of prominent Protestants carried out in Paris and elsewhere in France on August 24, 1572. It has been generally believed since the 16th century that Charles IX was pressured into ordering the killings by his mother, the dowager queen Catherine de' Medici. Particularly shocking was that many of those murdered were in Paris to attend the wedding of the king's sister, Marguerite de Valois, to Henry III, the Protestant king of Navarre. Seventeen years after the massacre, Henry of Navarre would convert to Catholicism so that he could succeed to the French throne as Henry IV of France.

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