The Dauphin Charles-Orlant

The frame of this small oak panel carries the date 1494, and the boy in it was about two years old. Charles-Orlant was the first son of King Charles VIII of France and his queen, Anne of Brittany, born in October 1492. His parents had wanted to call him Orlando, the Italian form of Roland, the hero of the medieval Song of Roland, and after three days of argument with his godfathers the name was settled as Charles-Orland.

In that same year, 1494, his father marched into Italy to claim the kingdom of Naples, while the heir was kept at the royal château of Amboise. Jean Hey shows him half-turned, in a white gown and white cap, against a brocade background, holding a string of white and red beads.

The boy died at Amboise of measles in December 1495, at the age of three.