ABSTRACT
The next day after I returned to Harvard, I hastened to check out Peter Burke’s book on the representations of the Sun King, The Fabrication of Louis XIV. I was thrilled to find that the painting in question, in black and white facsimile, is the first image included in the book. But, again astonishingly, although Burke returns time and again to mention the painting, the androgynous aspect is left totally unsaid. He describes the painting as portraying “the dignified old age” of the king2 and achieving “a certain equilibrium between formality and informality,” with “a studied informality in the way in which he holds his scepter, the point down, as if it were the cane he usually carried in public.”3 He mentions a historian who points out “the elegant legs and the ‘ballet pose’ of the feet, a reminder of the king’s dancing days.”4 I was hoping that in the chapter titled “The Crisis of Representations,” something different would be said about the painting. But Burke says here, “His wig and his high heels helped to make Louis more impressive.” In a later reference to the same portrait, remotely close to what I have in mind, he says, “Louis wears the royal mantle, but it is open so that his modern clothes are visible underneath.”5
