The years during which her sons reigned have been called "the age of Catherine de' Medici" since she had extensive, albeit at times varying, influence on the political life of France.

During his reign, Henry excluded Catherine from state affairs, instead showering favours on his chief mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who wielded much influence over him.

[4] In practice, her authority was limited by the effects of the civil wars, and she suffers in comparison to what might have been had her husband the king lived to take responsibility or stabilise the country.

Therefore, her policies may be seen as desperate measures to keep the House of Valois on the throne at all costs and her patronage of the arts as an attempt to glorify a monarchy whose prestige was in steep decline.

The young couple had been married the year before at Amboise as part of the alliance between King Francis I of France and Lorenzo's uncle Pope Leo X against the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

[12] In 1527, the Medici were overthrown in Florence by a faction opposed to the regime of Clement's representative, Cardinal Silvio Passerini, and Catherine was taken hostage and placed in a series of convents.

[17] On her visit to Rome, the Venetian envoy described Catherine as "small of stature, and thin, and without delicate features, but having the protruding eyes peculiar to the Medici family".

The wedding, a grand affair marked by extravagant display and gift-giving,[20] took place in the Église Saint-Ferréol les Augustins in Marseille on 28 October 1533.

In desperation, Catherine tried every known trick for getting pregnant, such as placing cow dung and ground stags' antlers on her "source of life", and drinking mule's urine.

She may have owed her change of fortune to the physician Jean Fernel, who may have noticed slight abnormalities in the couple's sexual organs and advised them how to solve the problem.

[30] Henry even gave the Château of Chenonceau, which Catherine had wanted for herself, to his mistress Diane de Poitiers instead, who took her place at the center of power, dispensing patronage and accepting favors.

The imperial ambassador reported that in the presence of guests, Henry would sit on Diane's lap and play the guitar, chat about politics, or fondle her breasts.

[49] When Catherine realized Francis was going to die, she made a pact with Antoine de Bourbon by which he would renounce his right to the regency of the future king, Charles IX, in return for the release of his brother Condé.

She wrote to her daughter Elisabeth: "My principal aim is to have the honour of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority, not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom and for the good of all your brothers".

[62] Catherine held talks with Jeanne d'Albret, the Protestant queen regnant of Navarre (and the wife of Antoine de Bourbon) at Mâcon and Nérac.

[68] She told the Venetian ambassador in June 1568 that all one could expect from Huguenots was deceit, and she praised the Duke of Alba's reign of terror in the Netherlands, where Calvinists and rebels were put to death in the thousands.

The Huguenots retreated to the fortified stronghold of La Rochelle on the west coast, where Jeanne d'Albret and her fifteen-year-old son, Henry of Bourbon, joined them.

[79] Coligny was carried to his lodgings at the Hôtel de Béthisy, where the surgeon Ambroise Paré removed a bullet from his elbow and amputated a damaged finger with a pair of scissors.

Catherine wrote to Henry of Charles IX's death: "I am grief-stricken to have witnessed such a scene and the love which he showed me at the end ... My only consolation is to see you here soon, as your kingdom requires, and in good health, for if I were to lose you, I would have myself buried alive with you.

As time passed and the likelihood of children from the marriage receded, Catherine's youngest son, Francis, Duke of Alençon, known as "Monsieur", played upon his role as heir to the throne, repeatedly exploiting the anarchy of the civil wars, which were by now as much about noble power struggles as religion.

The Venetian ambassador, Gerolamo Lipomanno, wrote: "She is an indefatigable princess, born to tame and govern a people as unruly as the French: they now recognize her merits, her concern for unity and are sorry not to have appreciated her sooner.

[117] Henry IV was later reported to have said of Catherine: I ask you, what could a woman do, left by the death of her husband with five little children on her arms, and two families of France who were thinking of grasping the crown—our own [the Bourbons] and the Guises?

Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she did, her sons, who successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman?

Listed works of art included tapestries, hand-drawn maps, sculptures, rich fabrics, ebony furniture inlaid with ivory, sets of china, and Limoges pottery.

Caron's vivid Mannerism, with its love of ceremonial and its preoccupation with massacres, reflects the neurotic atmosphere of the French court during the Wars of Religion.

"As the daughter of the Medici," suggests French art historian Jean-Pierre Babelon, "she was driven by a passion to build and a desire to leave great achievements behind her when she died.

"[129] After Henry II's death, Catherine set out to immortalise her husband's memory and to enhance the grandeur of the Valois monarchy through a series of costly building projects.

In fact, a large population of Italians—bankers, silk-weavers, philosophers, musicians, and artists, including Leonardo da Vinci—had emigrated to France to promote the burgeoning Renaissance.

Essentially, however, there exists no concrete proof that she took part in the occult, and it is now believed that Catherine's trouble in providing an heir was in fact due to Henry II's penile deformity.

[145] Catherine herself had been educated by Cosimo Ruggeri in astrology and astronomy, which were closely linked in her day[146] and were an academic rather than a Satanic activity,[147] although his general background and favourite status suggests there was more to it than that.