Terms and conditions of use
Louis XIII of France
(1622)
- Medium
- oil on paper on wood panel
- Measurements
- 42.8 × 32.5 cm
- Accession Number
- 315-5
- Department
- International Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1959
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited - Gallery location
- 17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
In 1622 Rubens travelled to Paris to undertake a series of tapestry designs for Marie de’ Medici, mother of Louis XIII. Louis used the occasion to commission portraits of himself and his wife Anne of Austria. The sittings were fraught with mistrust, with the young king regarding Rubens as a spy working against his chief minister Richelieu. Louis XIII or ‘Louis the Just’ (1601–43) succeeded to the French throne aged eight, after the assassination of his father, Henry IV. This rapidly executed portrait sketch of the young monarch would have served as the model for further images of Louis painted in Rubens’s studio.
- Subjects (general)
- Law, Civics and Protest Portraits
- Subjects (specific)
- black (colour) brown (colour) collars (neckwear) fur garments gaze (psychoanalytical concept) kings (people) Louis XIII, King of France portrait heads
- Provenance
- Recorded in the estate inventory of the collection of Diego Duarte (d.1682), Antwerp in 1682 collection of A. Harrison, Worcester, by 1955 subsequently in Paris where acquired by F. Rothmann (dealer-collector) in 1955 sold to Edward Speelman (dealer), London, 1955 purchased by Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 1956 from where acquired under the terms of the Everard Studley Miller Bequest on the advice of A.J.L. McDonnell, 1959.