A Reflection of the Sun: The Duke of Marlborough in the Image of Louis XIV

Abstract

This article investigates the influence of Louis XIV imagery on medals and tapestries commissioned by the first duke of Marlborough and his supporters from 1703 to 1711. To commemorate the martial ascendency of Britain, Marlborough and his allies employed models of representation developed for the Sun King by his image-makers to document his history visually. Here this is argued to be an act akin to spoliation — the theft of artefacts by a victor as symbolic enslavement of the vanquished enemy — ironically revealing the abiding influence of French culture on British material histories of the early eighteenth century.

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