"The Coronation in Saint-Denis" by Peter Paul Rubens

The Coronation in Saint-Denis by Peter Paul Rubens is part of the Marie de' Medici cycle, a series of 24 paintings. They were commissioned to the artist by Marie de' Medici, the second wife of the French king Henry IV. Marie had ordered the paintings for a gallery in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The whole series is now located in the Louvre. Rubens received the commission in the autumn of 1621, and the contract and terms were negotiated and agreed upon by early 1622. The artist was supposed to have two years to work on the whole series, so that the completion would coincide with the time of marriage of Marie's daughter, Henrietta Maria. Twenty-one of the paintings were to be about Marie's own struggles and triumphs in life, the other three were to be portraits of her.
These paintings are simply undescribable - you can stare at it for hours on a computer screen, but it's not even close to seeing it in real life. I had the great fortune to see it in the Louvre, and it's certainly something not to be forgotten. First of all, they are huge - they are all about 12 feet tall, but they vary in width. This one in particular is about 21 feet wide this is one of the largest paintings in the series.. It's surprising that the artist managed to finish 24 paintings (all of which are very large) in only two years, considering the extraordinary amount of detail in each one. You could stare at the picture for hours and find new details all the time.

What I really like about this is how all of the flowing dresses and robes are drawn - they all look real, almost as if you could reach into the picture; step into it.
At first when I was looking at the picture, I though it was fairly average (except for the size), but then I noticed the people flying above everybody - some mythological people. When I looked at the other images, I noticed that most of them had some sort of mythologic scene in a part of the painting. I think that that is a good part of the images. That is what ties them all together, lets you know that they are all part of one series.
I think it's slightly funy that, in an image of a very important event, there are two dogs in the foreground, and one of them seems to be itching. If I were an artist, I would attempt to make something seem better than it actually is; if there was an imperfection, I would ignore it for the painting. Rubens, apparently, was an honest artist.