Saint Louis, King of France

Saint Louis, King of France is a portrait of Louis IX of France painted by El Greco during the later part of his years in Toledo, around 1590 to 1597. Unlike the conventional images of the king, which follow well-established formulas, the painter creates an unusual figure: a man with an elongated silhouette, slender hands, a pale face and tired eyes that convey a restrained melancholy. Louis IX was remembered for his austere, devout life and his concern for lepers, the poor and the destitute; during his reign the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris was built and the Sorbonne was founded. He died on a crusade, a detail that adds to the spiritual weight of the portrait.

The figure is shown three-quarters length in front of a backdrop of architecture and landscape, a arrangement El Greco often used. Those elements are now hard to make out, although a view of Toledo can be identified on the left, a city the painter frequently included in his work. The king wears a crown decorated with fleurs-de-lis, a sixteenth-century armour and an orange cloth draped across his body. In his right hand he holds delicately the hand of justice, the traditional emblem of French kings, and in his left a sceptre that also ends in a fleur-de-lis. In the lower right corner a page with curly hair, dressed in a ruff collar and lace cuffs, carries the royal helmet; this is the best-preserved part of the canvas.

It is not known for certain who commissioned the picture. Luis de Castilla, a patron of the painter, has been proposed as a possible client, wishing to see his patron saint depicted. The sitter's identity is also uncertain: Gregorio Marañón suggested someone from the Hospital del Nuncio, while other scholars believe El Greco invented the iconography from his own observation of everyday life. As for the page, it has been suggested that the painter's son, Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli, may have posed, though this remains unconfirmed.

The painting has lost much of its original colour and has undergone restorations of uneven quality, which affect how the landscape reads today. Several copies exist, of varying quality, among them a version in the El Greco Museum in Toledo that is considered weak and probably by his son.

Painter

El Greco

Date

1592

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

120 × 96 cm

Museum

Louvre Museum, Paris

Genre

portrait

Depicts

regalia, crown, lace, boy, hand of justice, Louis IX of France, body armor, collar

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