Don Pedro de Tolède baisant l'épée d'Henri IV

The subject is a small, courtly anecdote Ingres jotted in a notebook: the Spanish ambassador to France, Don Pedro of Toledo, spots the sword of the late King Henri IV in the hands of a young page in the Louvre, kneels, and kisses it as the most glorious blade in Christendom. Ingres loved these polished scenes from the French past, a taste much in fashion in his day, and he painted the moment several times over nearly 20 years. This is the last and smallest version, which the Louvre acquired in 1981. The setting is a real room, the hall of the caryatids, whose carved stone women still stand along the palace wall today.