Louis XIV, roi de France

1701

Oil on canvas, 109 × 76 1/2 in. Musée du Louvre, Paris

The picture the Rococo turned away from: a king at full length, nine feet of ermine and column built to be looked up at.

Look at

Everything runs vertical and full height — column, drapery, standing figure — so the king towers over the viewer.
Each material is painted as itself: the stipple of ermine, the sheen of velvet, the lace. Nothing dissolves into atmosphere.
Blue, gold, red and white sit side by side with hard edges — a uniform, not a mood.

Painted for the king's grandson Philip V to take to Madrid; the court so admired it that Louis kept it and ordered a second version for Spain.
Hung over a chimneypiece in the Salon d'Apollon at Versailles by about 1705; seized at the Revolution and sent to the Louvre in 1814.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain