Prudence, Element of the Monument for the Heart of Louis XIII
Jacques Sarazin (1592-1660) · 1643
In an oval marble medallion a seated woman in classical drapery turns her head towards a winged child who holds up a mirror to her, while a serpent coils around her arm. She is Prudence, one of the cardinal virtues, and her two attributes explain her: the mirror for self-knowledge and the serpent for wisdom. Jacques Sarazin, who had spent long years in Rome, gives her the calm proportions and clear, flowing folds of the classical Baroque he brought back to Paris.
The relief belonged to the monument for the heart of Louis the Thirteenth, which Queen Anne of Austria commissioned and dedicated in 1643, the year of the king's death, in the Jesuit church of Saint-Louis in the Marais, now Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis. Royal hearts were buried apart from bodies in France, and the Jesuits obtained the honour of keeping this one. The monument was seized on 2 May 1794 and passed through the Museum of French Monuments, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the stores of Saint-Denis before being transferred to the Louvre and inventoried in 1882.
Did You Know? French kings were buried in pieces: the body at Saint-Denis, the heart in a separate monument, and this Prudence guarded the heart of Louis the Thirteenth.
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