After Charles Le Brun

Both paintings are copies in the same sense of Gérard Audran's monumental engravings after Le Brun's designs. The Battle of Milvian Bridge, published in 1666, was itself partially based on an unfinished painting of the same subject, commissioned in 1659 by Cardinal Mazarin and now in Musée Municipal of Château-Gontier. Alexander and Porus, published in 1678, was based on Le Brun's 1673 painting of the same subject, now in the Louvre.¹

^1. For The Battle of Milvian Bridge see L. Marchesano and C. Michel, Printing in the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XVI, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2010, p. 50-4, reproduced cat. no. 1 and for Alexander and Porus see Ibid, pp. 70-4, reproduced cat. no. 9.