Portrait of King Louis XIV (1600s): Art, History and Details

Portrait of King Louis XIV (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean Petitot (Swiss, 1607–1691).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Unlike fragile portrait miniatures painted in watercolor on vellum or ivory, which are prone to cracking, fading, and flaking, enamels are resilient, impervious to the effects of light, and retain their striking original colors over time. Partly for this reason enamel was considered ideal for reproducing famous paintings and treasured portraits in a reduced and luminous form. The complicated and labor-intensive process of enameling required the artist to fire numerous layers of colored metal oxide at different temperatures. This process made it difficult to produce a faithful portrait likeness, though masters of the medium were able create portraits of remarkable subtlety imbued with the sitter's personality. The heyday of enamel painting was the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Among the enamel specialists was the Swiss Jean Petitot, who was patronized by English King Charles I, French King Louis XIV, and Polish King John III Sobieski. His workshop produced many versions of this portrait of King Louis XIV, which would have been much in demand as a diplomatic gift from the king to loyal courtiers or foreign allies.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of King Louis XIV
• Date: 1600s
• Creator attribution: Jean Petitot (Swiss, 1607–1691)
• Culture: France
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: enamel in a silver and diamond frame
• Dimensions: Framed: 3.4 x 3.1 cm (1 5/16 x 1 1/4 in.); Unframed: 2.8 x 2.4 cm (1 1/8 x 15/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1940.1216

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.