From Marriage to Massacre: The Louvre in August 1572

Forging a dialogue between an architectural treatise (by Jacques Androuët du Cerceau), a literary text (by Agrippa d’Aubigné), and various other textual and artistic “traces,” this article examines how the late-Renaissance Louvre came to be not just a backdrop but a fully constituted theater for key events: the marriage of Catholic Marguerite de Valois to Huguenot Henri de Bourbon; and the assassination of Huguenot leader, Gaspard de Coligny. Usher shows how Du Cerceau and D’Aubigné, in conflicting ways, employ the Louvre to configure connections between art and royal and religious authority during this particularly difficult moment of French history.