Portrait of Louis XIV, workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud circa 1694

Rare bust portrait of Louis XIV in armor.

The king, aged 54, is depicted in a three-quarter length portrait, facing the viewer straight on. He sports voluminous, long, curly hair and small locks of hair on his forehead. He is richly dressed in a braided doublet and lace jabot, a cuirass with fleur-de-lis studs, and a blue baldric. His right arm appears outstretched, while his left is close to his body.
Oil on canvas, original canvas, gilt oak frame.
Beautifully preserved.
French work, workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud, between 1694 and 1701.

Dimensions:

Canvas: H: 81 cm; Width: 62 cm

Our opinion:

While the portrait of Louis XIV in coronation robes is undoubtedly the most famous depiction of the Sun King, it is not the only portrait of the king created by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Indeed, during his long and successful career, the Catalan artist depicted the king three times. The first portrait, depicting the king from the waist up and in armor, was probably created in 1694. Although absent from the artist's account books, which are a rich source of information on Rigaud's work, the painting is best known from the numerous copies made from 1694 onward by the artist's studio. The most faithful copy appears to be the one held at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick (Inv. No. 523. Former collection, Cat. 1737). Among the many collaborators who worked on the copy, we can cite great names in 18th-century French painting such as Nattier, who was paid 21 livres for a complete copy, Parrocel, who received 70 livres for a background "for the King and another for Mr. De La Brosse," or Jean Ranc, who was paid 100 livres for a full-length copy, 36 livres for two bust-length copies, 30 livres for a copy of the armed king, and 40 livres for two other copies. Fetching up to 600 livres, these studio copies exhibit a certain freedom of reproduction compared to Rigaud's original. This is particularly the case for the king's clothing: while wearing full armor in the original, many copies depict the sovereign with only his breastplate, which makes his doublet more visible. This is the case for our portrait, as well as the one preserved at the Château de Chambord (Inv. CNMHS. Inv. NE 259), that of the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Copenhagen (Inv. KMSsp706), and that at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (Inv. DPG 85.)
In this first portrait of the king by Rigaud, and especially in its many versions that would widely disseminate the model, we can glimpse the scheme that the master would reuse in 1701 in the second portrait of Louis XIV in coronation robes: an absolute sovereign able to dispense with his military assets. It was to replace this portrait of the king in coronation robes, which was to be sent to the King of Spain, that Rigaud created his third portrait of the Sun King: a full-length portrait, in which the sovereign poses in full armor before the Siege of Namur in 1692. This portrait, now in the Prado in Madrid, uses the composition of the first portrait of 1694 to present to the new King of Spain the vision of a warrior sovereign personally leading his armies to victory. This portrait of his great-grandfather greatly pleased Philip V, as well as the Spanish court, which preferred this vision of the Sun King to the quasi-spiritual grandiloquence of the portrait in coronation robes.