Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs (Gabrielle d'Estrées and one of her sisters) is a painting by an unknown artist dated c. 1594. It is in the Louvre in Paris and is usually thought to be the work of a painter from the Fontainebleau School. Description The painting portrays Gabrielle d'Estrées, mistress of King Henry IV of France, sitting nude in a bath, holding a ring. Her sister Julienne-Hyppolite-Joséphine sits nude beside her and pinches d'Estrées' right nipple. Interpretations Announcing Gabrielle's pregnancy The nipple-pinching gesture has been interpreted as a symbolic announcement that Gabrielle is pregnant with Henry's child, César de Bourbon. According to the Louvre's website: "The oddly affectionate way in which the sister is pinching Gabrielle d'Estrées' right breast has often been taken as symbolizing the latter's pregnancy with the illegitimate child of Henry IV. This interpretation would seem to be confirmed by the scene of the young woman sewing – perhaps preparing a layette for the coming child – in the background." The ring that Gabrielle holds is said to be Henry's coronation ring, which he may have given to her as a token of his love shortly before she died. Other interpretations In the early years of the seventeenth century, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme told a story about a group of people who went to view the painting. He described the painting as showing "fair naked ladies" together in a bath, and adds that they "touch, and feel, and handle, and stroke, one the other, and intertwine and fondle with each other." Brantôme reveals that while the group was viewing the painting, "one great lady" who was a part of the group "los[t] all restraint ... before the picture, say[ing] to her lover, turning toward him [as if] maddened [by] the madness of love she beheld [in the painting]: 'Too long have we tarried here. Let us now straightway take [my] coach and go to my lodging; for ... no more can I hold in the ardor that is in me. Needs must away and quench it; too sore do I burn.'" During the first half of the nineteenth century, Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs hung in the Prefecture of Police in Paris. Dr. Ver Heyden de Lacey stated in an article from 1935 that "Nobody knew why or how it came there; [it was] placed above a door in one