The Parting of King Robert and Bertha

Painted in 1883 and held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this canvas depicts one of the most dramatic episodes in the reign of Robert II of France: his forced separation from Queen Bertha of Burgundy under papal pressure following the excommunication Laurens had already treated in his 1875 Orsay painting. Having been excommunicated for a marriage deemed incestuous by consanguinity, Robert eventually succumbed to ecclesiastical pressure and agreed to separate from Bertha, whom he had genuinely loved. The parting scene offered Laurens an opportunity to move from the public drama of the excommunication to the intimate human cost of Church power exercised over private life. Philadelphia's purchase reflects American collecting institutions' systematic engagement with French academic painting in this period, and the work's presence there ensured that Laurens's treatment of medieval French history reached a significant transatlantic audience.

The composition focuses on two figures in a moment of farewell charged with suppressed emotion, the formality of royal costume and setting in tension with the private grief of the parting. Laurens handled this intimate emotional register with the same controlled assurance he brought to crowd scenes and public confrontations, the restraint of the figures' expressions conveying depth of feeling through what is withheld rather than displayed. Architectural or landscape framing provides spatial context without intruding on the emotional core.