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- Plaque
- Portrait of Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre
- Jean II Limosin
- Limoges, France
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- Date: c. 1627 - c. 1630
- Medium: Enamel, flesh tones, red and black details, foil, gold and copper, enamelled and gilded, with enlevage
- Height: 8.8 cm
- Width: 7.2 cm
- Weight: 28.8 g
- Inv: C598
- Location: Sixteenth Century Gallery
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- This enamel is attributed to Jean Limosin, grandson of Léonard Limosin. Jean was referred to as ‘émailleur du roi’ [enameller to the king] in legal documents in 1621, 1623 and 1627. He requested that a fleur-de-lys, which is incorporated into the maker's mark I L on this enamel and denotes artisans in the king’s employ, be incorporated into his coat of arms for his burial.
Louis XIII (1601–1643), the second Bourbon king of France, was the son of Henri IV and Marie de’ Medici and great-grandson of Henri d’Albret (see C585). Louis inherited the throne at the age of eight, following his father’s assassination in 1610. His mother acted as regent until his majority in 1614. The region of Navarre on the lower western slopes of the Pyrenees had been a separate kingdom until 1589 when Henry II, king of Navarre, ascended the French throne as Henry IV, the first Bourbon king. Thereafter, the kings of France also bore the title ‘king of Navarre’.
Major upheavals of Louis’s reign were the Thirty Years War and the renewal of the French Wars of Religion, in which key events were the defeat of the Huguenots at the siege of La Rochelle in 1628 and their disempowerment with the Peace of Alais in 1629.
By the early seventeenth century there was significantly less demand for royal portraits in Limoges enamel than there had been in the later sixteenth century. While Louis’s marriage to Anne of Austria in 1615 stimulated a demand for small enamel portraits of the king and his bride, enamel portraits of Louis in adulthood are rare. This one is modelled on an engraving by Michel Lasne which follows a popular format for contemporary portrait prints. The king wears the blue sash of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit. The decoration framing the portrait, comprising small-scale floral motifs on foil set amidst delicate stylized gilt foliage, was used by Limoges enamellers for much of Louis XIII’s reign.
- This enamel is attributed to Jean Limosin, grandson of Léonard Limosin. Jean was referred to as ‘émailleur du roi’ [enameller to the king] in legal documents in 1621, 1623 and 1627. He requested that a fleur-de-lys, which is incorporated into the maker's mark I L on this enamel and denotes artisans in the king’s employ, be incorporated into his coat of arms for his burial.