How did the absolutism of Louis 14th effect the way

artists pictured the king?

Daria Belousova
History
2020
 Section 1. Identification and evaluation of sources

For my work I decided to discover a dependence between two huge topics

of history as politics and art. For politics I choose the reign of Louise 14th (1643 –
1715) and for arts – royal portraits. So, my question is “How did the absolutism of
Louis 14th effect the way artists pictured the king?”.
In order to answer the stated question, I needed to track the change of
several aspects during Louis 14th's range and a while before, so to find a difference.
For the “before” period I choose the range of his father, Louis 13th's (1610 to 1643).
To investigate the topic, I mainly used two sources. The first one is a historical
book “Louis 14th”1 by a published author Geoffrey Trease. He was famous for his
novels for kids, but his stories had a strong historical background. Although he
wasn’t a professional historian, he wrote books about variety of periods in history.
Such as: “The Crown of Violet”, “Set in Ancient Greece” and “Middle Ages”. Thus, I
consider his work as a reliable source of information, from which I learned in detail
about Louis 14th's life and his range. The second source is a video from YouTube
“Baroque France”2. This is a short lecture about art in the investigated period. The
video is quite informative, but it made by an unknown woman. To infer if I can trust
this source, I examined her YouTube channel. There were lots of historical videos
about other topics which means he is dealing with variety of historical sources and
books. The information I learned from this video helped me to form the picture of
art of this period.

1“Louis XIV” by Geoffrey R R Treasure

https://books.google.fi/books?hl=ru&lr=&id=xnt0DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=+LOUIS+XIV.+GLORY+AND+TES
TING+book&ots=6ALHjSIEMi&sig=Q6536mimUBHVVDAi3u2Uaq9BUE0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

2
“Baroque France” by Art History Basix YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqWUc1mf_EY&t=6s
 Section 2. Investigation

There are many factors which influences artist’s masterpieces. To get a

reasonable answer to my question I had to go into several topics: the society’s
attitude on Louis 14th, painting era of this period and styles of each kings’ painters.
Because those factors are frequently changing, it was important for my research to
take two kings close in time.
I started my investigation by the era. And the era of this period is Baroque.
The Baroque is a dramatic type of art, it refers to the emotions and trying to express
them into art works so to awake these feelings in a viewer. There were 3 tendences
that promoted Baroque: Counter-Reformation, developments in science together
with exploration of the world and monarchy. And from the last one I already know
that Louis 14th absolute monarchy indirectly influenced the way he was pictured.3
When I got to the part of finding kings’ painters for each king, I found out
that both had the same person. It was Nicolas Poussin. He was the main painter of
Baroque in France. Nicolas used mythological motives. Usually his characters were
placed into landscapes. His works were logical and had order.
When Nicolas pictured the Louis 13th he didn’t make visible changes from his
usual works. Even though kings were always pictured in rooms of their palaces,
Louis’s portraits often had nature on the background. Some of the portraits even
contain mythology motives. Also, sometimes he is not the only one on the painting
and he does take the main role of this story. From this I can infer that painters felt
a sort of freedom in expressing Louis 13th on their canvases.4
When it comes to the paintings of Louis 14th, we see a contrary situation. At
this art works the king is always the main figure. He is massive and strong. He has

“Baroque art and architecture” by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/art/Baroque-art-and-architecture

4“Nicolas Poussin” by Audiopedia YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdmIpKXpdq4
long huge clothes or cloak. Also, Louis 14th is always pictured in richly decorated
rooms with a crown and sword. All these items are symbols or greatness and
power.5
Since I shoved that Louis 14th did have different portraits than the king
before, I needed to reason why he had this impact on the artists. As artists are a
part of society they are influenced as like as anyone else. So, I will talk about the
people in general.
Louis 14th was a king that ruled Western Europe’s most powerful kingdom
for more that 70 years. He was a model of absolute power, even more than
humanly powerful. He was taking all the power to himself. Louis 14th was making
all the decisions and he knew everything that was happening in his Kingdom. He
was saying “The state is me”.6 Louis 14th used to think he is a prototype of the God
Appolon. When he participated in plays, he often took the rule of Sun. So, he was
called the “Sun King”.7

5“Baroque France” by Art History Basix YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqWUc1mf_EY&t=6s
6 “Absolute Monarchy: Crash Course European History #13” by CrashCourse YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYPAFqQgbqE

7 “Why Was Louis XIV Called The Sun King?” by Conny Waters

https://www.ancientpages.com/2019/07/11/why-was-louis-xiv-called-the-sun-king/
 8

In the proses of my research I found the answer to my question. The

absolutism of louis 14th influenced the way he was pictured in two ways: he
influenced the appearing of Baroque style and he created a great, wealthy and
strong picture of himself for his people to see.
During the process of doing my research I faced lots of challenges. And the
main was different facts in different resources. I think, it’s a big problem of
historical work that you cannot be one thunder percent sure about the reliability
of a fact. This is something that makes history science completely different from
others like math or biology where you can check a theory by making an experiment.
 Bibliography
“Nicolas Poussin” by Richard Verdi

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Poussin/Conversion-to-Classicism

“Baroque art and architecture” by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/art/Baroque-art-and-architecture

“Людовик XIII - биография, информация, личная жизнь” by ШтукиДрюки

https://stuki-druki.com/authors/ludovik-trinadcatiy.php

“Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France” by Orest Panum

https://books.google.fi/books?hl=ru&lr=&id=B7Q0DgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT12&dq=+LOUIS+XIV.+GLOR
Y+AND+TESTING+book&ots=4xVOOuoeE9&sig=v4vgoO01fkuMbHSLY1BXAgoXwTk&redir_esc=y#v=onep
age&q=LOUIS%20XIV.%20GLORY%20AND%20TESTING%20book&f=false

“Художественные стили в хронологической последовательности (Западное искусство)” by Истории

плюс рисунки

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5b33267990cdf400a9227292/hudojestvennye-stili-v-hronologicheskoi-
posledovatelnosti-zapadnoe-iskusstvo-5f3e7fc62d3d976cd4bd38f8

“Baroque France” by Art History Basix YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpNHxhq8JZfXhjvJFAmrU5w

“Nicolas Poussin” by Audiopedia YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdmIpKXpdq4

“Why Was Louis XIV Called The Sun King?” by Conny Waters

https://www.ancientpages.com/2019/07/11/why-was-louis-xiv-called-the-sun-king/