# Portrait of Jean le Bon, King of France [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [UNKNOWN MASTER, French]() - Date: 1351-1400 - Technique: Wood, 60 x 44 cm ## Commentary Portrait of Jean le Bon, King of France c. 1360 Wood, 60 x 44 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris Although no mid-fourteenth century panel painting has come down to us, we can imagine what it may have been like in regarding this portrait of Jean le Bon, which is at the same time the earliest example of portraiture north of the Alps. The painter's brush is used with remarkable assurance, obviously practised in the creation of larger compositions as well. The artist has painted the sitter in profile against a golden background. The very individual character of the face is painted with great realism. A faintly perceptible smile hovers on the lips, the hair is red, the eyes blue. Without the inscription above his head 'Jehan, roi de France', one would hardly imagine it the portrait of a royal personage, a king whose life was full of vicissitudes, ruling during the hardships of the Hundred Years' War. ## Related artworks - [A Knight of the Golden Fleece]() - [A Miracle of St Benedict]() - [Adam]() - [Allegory of the Vanity of Earthly Things]() - [Altar frontal: Christ and Angels]() - [Annunciation]() - [Apostle \(detail\)]() - [Apostle]() - [Archangel Gabriel]() - [Book cover]() - [Book cover]() - [Bust of Cardinal Duprat]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()