Equestrian Portrait of Louis XIV

The Mignard shows originality in portraiture. This art had almost ceased to exist in its own right, owing to the importance which the Academy attached to history painting. Mignard had the skill to give life to this ailing tradition, and his portraits in this vein, such as the present painting, are vastly superior to similar productions by his rivals, such as Claude Lefebvre, who used a more or less Flemish formula deriving ultimately from van Dyck.

In his Equestrian Portrait of Louis XIV Mignard is more ambitious. He shows the King at the siege of Maastricht, dressed as a Roman Emperor on a prancing horse while a Victory flies down to crown him with laurel. Mignard is competing directly with Baroque artists, with Bernini in the pose of the horse, and with Rubens in the whole conception of the portrait. The result proves how unwise it was for a classically trained painter to attempt the vivacity of movement which was the natural idiom of a Baroque artist.