Portrait of a Man in Armour

In France around 1700, plate armour had largely gone from the battlefield and survived mainly in portraits, where a breastplate still stood for courage and command. That is the work it is doing here. The museum dates the canvas between 1690 and 1710 and files it under no painter at all, only the French school. The man inside the armour it records plainly as unknown, going no further than a resemblance, that his features recall those of Louis XIV. A name for him circulates on the internet, a Polish king elected in 1669, though the museum's record does not carry it and its own dating puts the canvas at least 20 years after that election. The picture is small, 43 centimetres by 33. It came to Palazzo Pitti from the Uffizi deposits on 17 February 1954 and has stayed in the gallery's stores, and a printed label on its back still assigns it to the third category of the inventory of 1881.