The Siege of La Rochelle by Louis XIII

In October 1628 the Protestant port of La Rochelle surrendered to Louis XIII after a siege of more than a year that had starved most of its people. A few years later, in Rome, Claude painted the siege on a small oval of copper, and on a matching oval the king's next victory, in the Alps. According to a Latin note in a 17th-century catalogue, Claude offered the pair to Louis XIII himself.

That note was written by the next owner, Louis Henri de Loménie de Brienne. His father had been the king's secretary of state and had followed him to both places, and the Louvre supposes that the king passed the two coppers on to him. They returned to the crown in 1671, when the banker and collector Everhard Jabach sold them to Louis XIV.

Claude takes the view from the south-east of the town, where the village of Aytré stands, and the museum notes that the placing of the troops and their uniforms is accurate. Nowhere else in his work did Claude set down a real event of his own time so closely. He signed and dated this oval at the lower left, and neither can be read any more.