(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
A study of King Louis XIII of France on horseback,
oil on copper, 41.5 x 35 cm, framed

This would appear to be a studio version of a lost sketch by Rubens, executed during the Paris sojourn for the project of the Maria de Medici series commission. Another slightly larger version of this composition is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (oil on copper, 63 x 50 cm, accession number WA1845.18).

The pose of the rearing horse in the present paining, as well as in the Oxford painting is based on a famous lost study from the Rubens studio. The original studies on which Rubens’ early equestrian works were based has until now remained something of a mystery. Three of the poses he used most often have been known through the now lost painting formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, which was traditionally called The Riding School. In 1987 Hans Vlieghe recognised that the Berlin picture was not in fact intended to show an actual riding school, but was perhaps instead a “studio ‘prop’ to be used whenever an equestrian portrait was called for.” The Berlin picture showed three horses arranged together on a single canvas, on a landscape background, and in the three “attitudes” 17th Century viewers might have expected to see horses performing. The central horse is a semi-rearing grey horse in profile (performing a pesade), which can be seen in the large Wolf and Fox Hunt of about 1616 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) painted by Rubens and his studio. The horse on the right showed a «piebald» horse from behind. This pose, evidently unsuitable for both portraits and hunting compositions, is only known to have been used once by Rubens: in the foreground of his circa 1630 Henry IV at the Siege of Amiens in the Gothenburg Museum of Art.

The central horse, in reverse, was the model used for the present portrait of King Louis XIII. As well as in the variant in Oxford, also in reverse. The Oxford painting is generally dated to circa 1622-25 and, like the present work, is connected to Rubens’ commission by the French Royal family during those years. One of the most important commissions of Rubens’ artistic career was the series of large-scale works painted to glorify the reign of Maria de Medici, the Queen Mother of France. This commission established the Flemish master as the most prestigious painter in Europe. At the beginning of 1622 Rubens and the Queen signed a contract according to which two cycles were to be executed to decorate the two galleries of the recently constructed Luxembourg Palace in Paris. One was to exalt the memory of the late king Henry IV - who had died in 1610 and who started the Bourbons’ reign of France - which was never finished for various reasons. The other was to commemorate various epic achievements from the reign of Marie de Medici, not an easy task because during her regency she had almost provoked civil war and had had to flee from Paris on two occasions. The queen wanted the cycle to be completed and hung before her daughter Henrietta Maria’s wedding to the Prince of Wales, the future Charles I, which took place in 1625. This meant that Rubens had to work very quickly, entrusting a lot of work to his assistants. The coming of age of Louis XIII is one of the climaxes of the series. Rubens also painted a portrait of the young king, today in the Norton Simon Museum (oil on canvas, 118.1 x 96.5 cm, accession number: F.1965.1.060.P.), and a study for a portrait in which the physiognomy is very close to the present painting in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (oil on paper on panel, 42.8 × 32.5 cm; accession number 315-5).

It is unclear whether the present portrait and the Ashmolean version record a lost equestrian portrait by the master himself. This seems unlikely, since no archival trace of such a portrait survives. Most probably Rubens made a sketch, which was used in the studio, together with the horses ‘poses taken from works like the Berlin Riding School, as a model for variations by the students and assistants, many of whom were employed to help accomplish the important Parisian commission. Attributions to Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Jan Boeckhorst have been suggested.

Louis XIII, called Louis le Juste, (1601–1643), reigned as king of France from 1610 to 1643, and cooperated closely with his chief minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu, to make France a leading European power.