Louis I, Prince of Asturias
1717. Oil on canvas.Room 039
Michel-Ange Houasse, son of the painter René-Antoine Houasse (c.1645-1710), had enjoyed a long career during the reign of Louis XIV of France (r.1643-1715). From 1715 until his death, Michel-Ange worked in the court in Madrid during the reign of the first Bourbon monarch, Philip V (r.1700-24 and 1724-46), creating interesting landscape paintings, genre scenes, religious paintings and portraits. The present canvas shows the crown prince dressed in the habit of a novitiate of the Order of the Holy Spirit and, as the inscription along the bottom of the painting indicates, he was ten when this work was painted in August 1717. Previously attributed to Louis-Michel van Loo (1707-71), the eminent Spanish scholar Elías Tormo y Monzó (1869-1957) reattributed it to Houasse following a stylistic analysis. There are various copies of this painting in private collections, but their quality is in general quite mediocre, suggesting that they were not produced in the painter´s circle, but are merely inferior imitations. The painting´s subject -the future king of Spain,Louis I- was born in Madrid in 1707. The son of Philip V and María Luisa of Savoy, he was the first Prince of Asturias from the House of Bourbon, a title conferred upon him in the Cortes of Castile in April 1709. In 1720, he married Louise Élisabeth d´Orléans, daughter of the Regent of France, in Lerma, Burgos. Upon his father´s abdication in January 1724, Louis ruled for a mere seven months, dying on 31 August 1724 without a successor. As a consequence, his father, Philip V, resumed the Crown, ruling until his death in 1746. Louis is represented in a palace interior dressed in a silver-grey costume with a serene bearing and a delicately delineated face, lacking the childlike liveliness one would expect in someone of his age. The painting appears to combine something of the interpretive sobriety characteristic of Spanish court portraits from the previous century, here rendered as stiffness, with the decorative tendencies of the French aesthetic, although in a schematic fashion. Houasse has created a splendid contrast between the cold range of colours in the figure of the sitter and the warm tones of his surroundings. The painting is executed with great precision and the colours are harmonious and refined. The even light, which falls from the viewer´s left side of the canvas, illuminates the sitter before a neutral background, which contributes to the sense of volume in the entire arrangement. This painting belongs within the current of international European painting inspired by the French portraiture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, exemplified in the work of such artists as Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743), Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746), Alexis-Simon Belle (1674-1734), Robert Levrac-Tournières (1667-1752) and Jean François De Troy (1679-1752). Houasse´s painting reveals the characteristic features of these painters´ work, but it lacks the baroque impulse that lies behind their mastery. Despite the work´s somewhat stiff technique, it nonetheless possesses a certain gracefulness. It is true that, as an official portrait, the sitter displays an elegant, even stern bearing, reinforced by his sumptuous dress and his dynastic insignias. Even so, one may still perceive a certain childlike charm; Houasse suggests the prince´s individualism through his treatment of the boy´s gestures, his direct gaze and the focus on his facial expression, in particular, the soft smile on his lips. Houasse´s portraits must not have pleased Philip V, for he hired Jean Ranc (1674-1735), another French painter, in his place. Ranc executed countless portraits of members of the royal family in a more contemporary style, presenting the sitters in sumptuous, spectacular settings. However, it was not until the arrival of Van Loo, who worked in Spain from 1737 to 1752, that a painter would achieve the kind of royal portraiture, with an appearance of modernity, desired by the Bourbon court (Luna, J. J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 90).
