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Presumed portrait of "Gabrielle Estrees and her sister, the
Duchesse de Villars" (see detail), c. 1594 by the Ecole de Fontainebleu - Louvre Museum, Paris, France.
Note: A difficult to interpret allegoric representation of two
sisters sharing a bath and intimacies. Perhaps the
combination of nipple and ring are emblems to Gabrielle as
a favorite mistress with love, gestation and impending birth of
a child by the King Henry IV of France (a boy that became
Cesar de Vendome) - then such an event was not unusual for an
attractive woman to experience as ostentatiously pointed out
here by the fingers of her sister.
It is unusual that such a provocative painting survived the potential
attacks of sanctimonious hypocrits.
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