File:Louis XIII (Chiswick House).jpg

This painting has traditionally been ascribed to Ferdinand Elle. There were three generations of portrait painters named Ferdinand Elle, they are: Ferdinand Elle the Elder (about 1585-about 1640); his son Louis Elle, (called Ferdinand Elle or Louis Le Père 1612-1689) and his son Ferdinand Elle (also called Louis Le Fils 1648-1717). They all specialised as portraitists in the courtly style. The first two deployed a late Mannerist style dependent on the formulaic examples of Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569-1622), Louis' style being differentiated from that of his father by the occasional use of poses borrowed from Van Dyck. Although the dates of the Ferdinand Elle with which this painting has been associated are those of Louis Elle, it is more likely, given the subject of the two portraits at Chiswick, that they are the work of Ferdinand Elle the Elder or his studio. At an early age the painter of Flemish descent travelled to Paris, here he became court painter to Louis XIII (1601-1643) and is reputed to have been the teacher of Nicolas Poussin. The two paintings given to Ferdinand Elle at Chiswick are, as Horace Walpole described them in 1760 of 'Louis XIII & Anne of Austria his Queen, whole lengths'. Their attribution to Ferdinand Elle the Elder could then correspond to Dodsley's confused attribution of 1761 to 'Fred. Elde' presumably intending Ferdinand the Elder. Louis XIII was the son of Henry IV and Marie de'Medici, during most of his reign (1610-1643) royal power was either in the hands of his mother as regent or of Cardinal Richelieu.