Collection
The Kings of France
without their crowns
64portraits
Sixty-four portraits, from Childeric I (457) to Napoleon III (1870). No crowns: Leo Novoro paints the sovereigns bare-headed, as men rather than emblems, with the solidity of the classical portrait and the paint handling of today.
Merovingians
The first Frankish kings, from Childeric I to Childeric III. Long hair — the Merovingians’ royal privilege — red beards and cloaks pinned at the shoulder: no portraits survive from the period, so Novoro has had to invent their faces.
Carolingians
From Pepin the Short to Louis V: Charlemagne’s dynasty. You can read the break-up of the empire in this run of faces, which already includes three kings elected from outside the line — Odo, Robert I and Rudolph.
Capetians
From Hugh Capet to Charles IV the Fair: more than three centuries without a break in the line. Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, Philip the Fair — the faces that made the kingdom.
Hugh Capet
940–996
Robert II the Pious
972–1031
Henry I
1008–1060
Philip I
1052–1108
Louis VI the Fat
1081–1137
Louis VII the Young
1120–1180
Philip II Augustus
1165–1223
Louis VIII the Lion
1187–1226
Louis IX (Saint Louis)
1214–1270
Philip III the Bold
1245–1285
Philip IV the Fair
1268–1314
Louis X the Quarrelsome
1289–1316
Philip V the Tall
1293–1322
Charles IV the Fair
1294–1328
Valois
The dynasty of the Hundred Years’ War and the Renaissance, from Philip VI to Henry III. The faces bear the marks of what they went through: John the Good’s captivity in England, the madness of Charles VI, the Wars of Religion.
Bourbons & Bonapartes
From Henry IV to Napoleon III: the Bourbons, two emperors and a citizen king. Wigs, epaulettes, side-whiskers — the last faces in the collection are also the ones closest to us.
The brief
A monarchy
in faces
A long-haul project, begun in 2019, that runs through five dynasties.
The Kings of France is a portraitist’s undertaking in the old sense of the word: giving an institution a face. But Leo Novoro turns his back on coronation imagery. No king wears a crown; each is a head and shoulders, seen close to and lit like a sitter in the studio. For the early centuries, where no portraits exist, the painter invents. For the later ones he is in conversation with Clouet, Rigaud and David.
Each portrait is painted in oil, measures roughly 50 × 65 cm and can be acquired individually. The complete collection can be seen at the studio in Fontainebleau, by appointment.