Portrait of King Charles IX

Localisation : 1570
Année de création :
Artiste :François Clouet and workshop

Description

The portraits of Charles IX in Chantilly show the evolution of the sovereign from childhood to adulthood. This portrait is the result of a new commission for François Clouet from the young Valois King in 1570. Yet barely a year previously, the artist had painted a beautiful full length portrait with large dimensions, which was sent to Vienna with a view to his marriage to Elisabeth of Austria, of which the Condé Museum has a reduced scale copy. But the King felt he looked too young in it. In this three-quarter length portrait, Clouet did not change the depiction of the King, who is still wearing his luxurious cap. He added the thin moustache and beard of the young man, barely twenty years old. The King was not happy with it and demanded that Clouet make him look older. In this way, the sovereign’s youthful round features were replaced by a thinner face, whose paleness reflects his poor health. The King in fact died from tuberculosis at the age of 23.