King Henry IV's tribute to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées.

I don’t know about you, but after I turned six I stopped taking baths with my sister.

This painting was commissioned to celebrate King Henry IV’s first child with Gabrielle, César de Bourbon. Gabrielle is the one on the right.

Gabrielle is holding King Henry IV’s coronation ring in her left hand. Her sister is holding Gabrielle's nipple in her left hand (awkward). The seamstress in the back is sewing with her left hand. The man in the painting way in the back is not holding his junk with his left hand but it’s the only hand we can see. Clearly someone was a lefty.

The British short film Two Nudes Bathing (1995) is about this painting.

In the Showtime series The Tudors, which is long on nudity and short on facts, two of Queen Catherine of Aragon’s maids seduce Anne Boleyn’s brother by posing like this painting. Basic fact checking will tell you that Catherine died in 1536, almost 60 years before this painting is believed to have existed. Oops.

Gabrielle d’Estrées was the mistress of King Henry IV of France from 1591 until her death in 1599, at the age of 26, producing three children together, all of whom he legitimized.

Gabrielle was exceptionally dutiful to the king. When Henry was off fighting battles, Gabrielle would travel with him and stay in his tent nearby. She did his laundry, answered his letters, made him food AND she did this while pregnant. The king actually listened to her advice as well. She convinced him that the quickest way to end the religious wars was to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism and he did!

Mistress Gabrielle was clearly a better queen than Henry's wife, so Henry appealed to the Pope for an annulment. He even gave Gabrielle his coronation ring. Gabrielle was so sure their marriage would happen she said, 'Only God or the king's death could put an end to my good luck'. And then she died a few days later in childbirth.

Henry was devastated, wearing black in mourning, something no king had ever done, and gave her a funeral fit for a queen. She is buried at the Notre-Dame-La-Royale de Maurbuisson Abbey in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. He drowned his sorrows in new women.