Pierre Albert Roberti

Among the provosts and other members of her court - all represented in full length and richly dressed - the Queen is wearing a golden crown, an ermine dress and a mantle embroidered with fleurs-de-lys. The scene is located in an imaginary medieval Paris that evokes the new cathedral and the episcopal palace built around the year 1212 ; reason why the canons had already demanded arbitrary tax to peasants.

Immediately behind the Queen stands her son in a reverent attitude, the futur King Louis IX (1214-1270). The three young women of the Queen's party seem to evoke the sisters of Blanche of Castile : Berengaria of Castile (1180-1246), wife of King Alfonso IX of León, Urraca (1186-1220), wife of Alfonso II of Portugal, and Eleanor of Castile (1202-1244), married to James I of Aragon. Partially turned away, the second woman wearing the attributes of a Queen - a red hat and a coat lined with ermine - probably refers to Eleanor of England, Queen of Castile, Blanche's mother. Her ressemblance with Marie Thérèse Roberti's portrait by Navez is striking.

Albert Roberti's depiction of the event deviates from historical facts. The victorious Queen Blanche de Castile was almost 64 years old at the time of the freeing of the serfs. Does she borrow her beauty and youth to Antoinette Marie Anne Guillelmine Theyssens (17/01/1811- avt. 1874), the wife of Albert Roberti? The two got married on April 6, 1847 in Bruxelles, a month after the painting entered the Paris Salon.