Karl VII., König von Frankreich

The frame around this portrait once called its sitter the most victorious king of France, and it meant it. Charles VII inherited a kingdom half-lost to England during the Hundred Years' War, and it was during his reign, with the help of Joan of Arc who saw him crowned at Reims in 1429, that France slowly drove the English out. Jean Fouquet painted him around the time that long war was finally ending. He broke with the old fashion of showing rulers in flat profile, turning the king to a three-quarter view, hands folded on a cushion, a heavy figure squeezed slightly by the frame. It is one of the earliest independent painted portraits in western Europe.