The eldest son of Louis XIV and the Spanish Infanta María Teresa of Austria, Louis was born in 1661, receiving the title of Dauphin as heir to the French throne. Married to Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, their son, the future Philip V of Spain (born in 1683), inherited from his father the so-called Dauphin’s Treasure, now in the Museo del Prado. Louis died in 1711.

This canvas is one of a group of portraits collected by María Luisa de Orleans (1662-1689), first wife of Carlos II of Spain, which would become part of the Royal Collection. Some of these paintings must have decorated the Queen´s Gallery in the Alcázar (Madrid), a representation space where the Queen launched a decorative and iconographic program of exaltation of her dynasty. Others would be portraits of smaller relatives, generally of bust, that the sovereign would receive as a gift from them and that would decorate the private rooms of her room.

Puerto Mendoza, Eduardo, Una serie de retratos de escuela francesa del Museo del Prado en relación con la colección de María Luisa de Orleans: sugerencias y precisiones. Philostrato. Revista de Historia y Arte, 2018, p.5-32 [20]