School of François Clouet

Marguerite de Valois (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 14 May 1553-Paris, 27 March 1615) was the daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. In 1572, the Catholic Marguerite married the Protestant Prince Henry of Bourbon of Navarre (Henry III of Navarre). Her husband became Henry IV, King of France in 1589, and their marriage was dissolved in 1599, though she retained the title Queen of Navarre.
This sitter in this portrait contains characteristics found in two painted portraits of Marguerite: Francois Clouet's depiction of her as a child (Musée Condé, Chantilly) and a painting after Clouet of her as an adolescent (Musée Condé, Chantilly). The Morgan sheet shows her clothed as in her childhood portrait but with the curlier hair and gaze shifted toward the viewer as in her adolescent portrait. The sitter's features are somewhat misaligned, and the wan execution suggests that this is a variant by a less skilled draftsman in Clouet's orbit. Based on the prototypes by Clouet, it is probable that the sheet dates to the later 1560s or beyond. The proliferation of portrait drawings, which were avidly collected at court and often assembled into albums, led to a vast number of sheets being produced in the latter half of the sixteenth century.
This study is one of three sheets from the same album in the collection of Charles Wickert, a Russian-born collector living in Paris who amassed significant holdings of sixteenth and seventeenth century French portrait prints, and a later, smaller collection of sixteenth century French portrait drawings.