Gabrielle d'Estrées, favourite of Henry IV, her family and her death in 1599

It is believed that at the time the painting was made, the favourite of Henry IV was pregnant with his first son, who would be named César after Julius Caesar. The pregnancy may be hinted at by the woman in the background sewing children's clothes, and by the strange gesture of the sister touching her breast.

Gabrielle was the daughter of the famous courtesan Françoise Babou de La Bourdaisière and the Marquis de Cœuvres, of the ancient French noble house of Estrées. It is believed that Gabrielle, one of eight children in the family, first came to Paris as a mistress bought by Henry III, but he very soon abandoned the unsuccessful purchase, and she began to pass from hand to hand, until at last she lingered in the bed of the next King of France, who was no close relation of his predecessor.

The Annals of the town of Issoire describe the death of the Marquise de Cœuvres, the courtesan mother. In the 1580s, during the turmoil caused by the extinction of the House of Valois, Gabrielle's mother, the 50-year-old trollop Françoise Babou, fled with a 30-year-old lover to Issoire, from where she incited the siege of the château of Usson, in which Queen Margaret of Navarre was sheltering. On one summer night in 1592 the doors of the house of Yves d'Allègre were blown in, and a band of 10 to 12 killers drawn from the local inhabitants (possibly sent by the deceived Marquis de Cœuvres) savagely dispatched the marquise and her lover, and threw their bodies out of the window.

By the time of this brutal reprisal against her mother, the strumpet daughter was already the King of France's established favourite.

She bore Henry IV three children. In 1599 Henry divorced Queen Margot and, as some historians claim, intended to marry the mother of his bastards. But this was not to be: the Medici faction poisoned the king's mistress with fruit laced with poison, presented in his name. Gabrielle d'Estrées died on 10 April 1599, while carrying a fourth child.

On the death of Gabrielle, Madame de Neuvic wrote the following epigram:

I see a reality more dreadful than dreams:
Led by a pastoral bastard,
Six mortal, yet living sins
Walk to the graveyard in a grim formation
And, wailing "for the repose of the soul",
Mourn the seventh sin.

Literal translation