Collection
The Kings of France
without crowns
64portraits
Sixty-four portraits, from Childeric I (457) to Napoleon III (1870). No crowns, no attributes: Leo Novoro paints the kings in their everyday life, with the depth and volume of the classical portrait and the matter of the contemporary one.
Merovingians
The first Frankish kings, from Childeric I to Childeric III. Novoro paints them without crown or attribute, in the dress of their time: the dynasty appears as a succession of faces rather than a gallery of emblems.
Carolingians
From Pepin the Short to Louis V, the dynasty that invented the Christian emperor. The collection follows the fragmentation of the empire into a string of faces.
Pepin the Short
714 – 768
Charlemagne
742 – 814
Louis I the Pious
778 – 840
Charles II the Bald
823 – 877
Louis II the Stammerer
846 – 879
Louis III
863 – 882
Carloman II
867 – 884
Charles III the Fat
839 – 888
Odo
852 – 898
Charles III the Simple
879 – 929
Robert I
860 – 923
Rudolph
890 – 936
Louis IV
920 – 954
Lothair
941 – 986
Louis V
967 – 987
Capetians
Hugh Capet and his descendants build the kingdom: the collection crosses three centuries of faces, from the first Capetian to Charles IV.
Hugh Capet
940 – 996
Robert II
972 – 1031
Henry I
1008 – 1060
Philip I
1052 – 1108
Louis VI the Fat
1081 – 1137
Louis VII the Younger
1120 – 1180
Philip II Augustus
1165 – 1223
Louis VIII the Lion
1187 – 1226
Louis IX the Saint
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. These faces carry the trace of crises: defeats, captivity, wars of religion.
Philip VI
1293 – 1350
John II the Good
1319 – 1364
Charles V the Wise
1338 – 1380
Charles VI the Mad
1368 – 1422
Charles VII the Victorious
1403 – 1461
Louis XI
1423 – 1483
Charles VIII
1470 – 1498
Louis XII
1462 – 1515
Francis I
1494 – 1547
Henry II
1519 – 1559
Francis II
1544 – 1560
Charles IX
1550 – 1574
Henry III
1551 – 1589
Bourbons & Bonapartes
From Henry IV to Napoleon III, the end of the monarchy and the Empire. The last faces of the collection are also the closest to us.
Le projet
Une monarchie
en visages
A long-term commission, begun in 2019, across five dynasties.
The Kings of France series is a portraitist’s undertaking in the old sense: giving a face to an institution. But Leo Novoro refuses official imagery. No sceptre, no ermine cloak, no coronation pose — men and women caught in an ordinary moment, lit like studio sitters.
Each portrait is painted in oil, around 50 × 65 cm, and can be acquired individually. The complete collection is shown at the studio in Fontainebleau, by appointment.