Maria Cristina Medici

Maria Cristina Medici was born in Florence on August 24, 1609 ^{[1] [2]} . She was the first child in the family of the Grand Duke of Tuscan Cosimo II and Mary Magdalene , nee the Archduke of Austria from the House of Habsburg . On the paternal side, the princess was the granddaughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscan Ferdinand I and Mary Christine of Lorraine . Maternally, she was the granddaughter of the Austrian Archduke Charles II and Maria Anna of Bavaria , the princess from the Wittelsbach house.

Maria Christina received the same names as her paternal grandmother. The princess was baptized a year after birth - November 21, 1610 ^[3] . She was born disabled ; the historian Estella Galasso-Calderara in the book “Grand Duchess Maria Magdalene of Austria” described the condition of Maria Cristina as follows: “Guilty of her sex ^{[4] was} aggravated by serious physical and mental anomalies” ^[5] .

The family hid the princess’s physical and mental state ^[5] . In 1619, the ten-year-old Maria Cristina was placed in the monastery of the Immaculate Conception in Florence, entrusting the cares of the nuns from the Congregation of sisters St. Stephen. Here she lived with numerous servants and companions ^[6] .

After ten months of negotiations, on October 14, 1620, in Florence, the heads of the houses of the Medici and Farnese entered into a marriage contract under which Maria Cristina or another princess from the house of Medici was to become the wife of Prince Odoardo , son and heir of Ranuccio I , Duke of Parma and Piacenza from the house Farnese ^[7] . When the prince found out about the physical defects of his bride, he refused to marry her. The marriage contract provided for the groom the opportunity to replace one princess with another ^[8] , and instead of Maria Cristina, her younger sister Margarita was married to Odardo ^[9] .

Maria Cristina still lived in the monastery, but did not accept monastic tonsure ^[6] . She died on August 9, 1632 ^{[1] [2]} in the near Florence ^[10] .

In 1857, the tomb of the princess in the chapel of the Medici was opened and exhumed . During an examination of the remains of Maria Christina, it was found that from the clothes in which she was buried, “only lace, completely decayed, and a little metal from the flowers from which the crown was made” was preserved, the hair on the head was “separated from the skull and mixed with bone ” ^[11] .

Several intravital portraits of Maria Christina have been preserved. A 1613 children's portrait, attributed to the brush of , is now kept in the collection of the Museum of the History of Art in Vienna ^[12] . The art critic identifies with her a child’s portrait of the brush of the unknown and a portrait attributed to the brush of Cristofano Allori, in which she is depicted in the image of Judith with a sword and Holofernes head in her hands ^[13] .