L’hommage du Sénat florentin au grand duc Ferdinand II

Ferdinand II de’ Medici, still a boy, receives the homage of the Florentine Senate seated between the two regents of Tuscany, his mother Marie-Madeleine of Austria and his grandmother Christine of Lorraine, the river Arno and the personification of Tuscany in the foreground. Justus Sustermans, a Flemish painter trained in Antwerp, had just entered Medici service when he made this ceremonial sketch, and he remained court painter to three successive grand dukes for half a century. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.