Louis XIII Forcing the Pass of Susa

In early March 1629, a few months after La Rochelle fell, Louis XIII was in the Alps with his army. The Duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I, had barricaded the narrow valley below Susa and manned it with his own soldiers, Imperial troops and Swiss, and the French forced their way through. The king was on his way to relieve Casale in Montferrat, besieged by the Spanish in the war over the succession to Mantua, where France backed one of the claimants.

Claude painted the action on an oval of copper about 41 centimetres wide, as the companion to his Siege of La Rochelle. The town of Susa lies in the middle distance. In the foreground soldiers stand about in small talking groups, and the Louvre hears in them an echo of the Bamboccianti, the painters of everyday street life who were then working in Rome. He signed it with his name and Romae, in Rome, followed by a year that begins 163 and is barely legible.

Louis XIV hung the two ovals in the private rooms of his Petit Appartement at Versailles, in the Cabinet des Coquilles, the cabinet of shells, and in his picture cabinet next door.