CLOUET, Francois (Tours c. 1515 - 1572).
Portrait of King Charles IX (1550-1574).
Black, white and red chalk, retouched by a later hand with bodycolor, on paper laid down on canvas.
Inscribed 'Le Roy charles quand il eust/dix ans' and dated '1561' and with inscription '9eme' (by a later hand).
13¼" x 9" sheet; 17" x 13" framed.

Provenance: Acquired in Paris, circa 1814 by Nikolai¯ Nikoaievitch Raevsky (1771-1823); Mikhail Mikhailovitch Raevsky (1875-1922), and by descent to his widow Olga Sergeievna Raevsky, Princess Gagarine; Sale, Paris, 1922. Mme. Jacques Balsan (née Consuelo Vanderbilt), Paris and New York. with French & Co., Inc., New York.This portrait was made in 1561, the year Charles (1550-1574) became king, succeeding his brother Francois II (1544-1560). It was used as the official image of the new monarch and was copied many times in different media. A drawn copy from Clouet's studio is in the Bibliotheque nationale, Paris, and the artist himself used it for his painted portrait of the young king dated 1561, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (E. Jollet, Jean & Francois Clouet, Paris, 1997, illus. p. 231). All the subsequent iconography of the king, including Clouet's later portraits, derives from the present portrait, for example Clouet's drawing of 1566 in the Ermitage, Saint-Petersburg, which is adopting the same pose but where the artist has added a nascent beard (Zvereva, op. cit., no. 396). The Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michiel described the young king in 1561 as 'an admirable child, with fine eyes, gracious movements, though he is not robust'.The present drawing was the only one from the Raevsky group to retain its original inscription (although it has been retouched). Until now, it was known only through a reproduction in Moreau-Nelaton's book on Clouet published in 1924.