François-Hercule of France, Duke of Alençon

In 1566 the youngest son of King Henry II and Catherine de' Medici, christened Hercule, took the name François at his confirmation. That same year he seems to have received the collar of the Order of Saint Michael, the French crown's order of knighthood, and the Louvre uses the chain he appears to wear here to date the original portrait to about 1566. This panel is a version from François Clouet's workshop, dated 1566 or 1567.

On the back, an old inscription on paper pasted onto the oak calls the sitter Monsieur the Duke of Alençon, brother of King Henry III. That form only fits after 1574, when his brother Henry came to the throne, so the label was written well after the painting. The boy grew up to court Elizabeth I of England, and he died in 1584. The panel came to the Louvre in 1856 with the gift of Charles Sauvageot, a Paris collector of Renaissance objects.