Henri IV jouant avec ses enfants au moment où l’ambassadeur d’Espagne est admis en sa présence

Ingres depicts Henri IV playing with his children at the moment the Spanish ambassador is admitted, at the left; Queen Marie de Médicis thrones at the centre of the picture, Henri IV is on the ground with the children clinging to him, and in the background at the right a servant observes the scene. Despite the familiarity of the episode, the painter suggests the dignity of rank: the two eldest children carry themselves with the gravity of princes. Ingres painted the scene in 1817, the year before the companion picture of the deathbed of Leonardo in the arms of Francis I — both drawn from the same royal-history repertory of his Roman years. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.