Jean Petitot's career as an enamellist spanned seven decades of the seventeenth-century and took him from his birthplace in Geneva to the courts of Charles I in London and of Louis XIV in Paris. He is widely regarded as the most important enamellist of his period on account of the incomparable quality and prolific nature of his work. The present miniature of Louis XIV shows the king as a young man c. 1655, and thus dates from relatively soon after Petitot's arrival in France. Although the enamellist had spent several years in England from 1637 onwards working with great success at the court of Charles I, he was forced to flee to France by the onset of the Civil War. He may have received an introduction at the court of Louis XIV from the king's aunt, Queen Henrietta Maria, who had also returned to exile in France after the execution of Charles I in 1649. Petitot was soon appointed Court Painter in Enamel to Louis XIV and received extensive patronage from the king and his circle at court. This success was to continue until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes(1685) when, as a Protestant, he was forced to return to Geneva where he eventually died in 1691. Although George Vertue recorded in his catalogue of Queen Caroline's Closet at Kensington Palace a miniature of Louis XIV when young, and two other enamels of the king, a far greater number of enamels by Petitot of this subject (twenty seven) were purchased between 1799 and 1827 by George IV. These were part of a group of over fifty enamels by Petitot acquired by him, many inset into snuff-boxes and many purchased from Rundell, Bridge and Rundell. After George IV's death in 1830, there was a large dispersal of his jewellery and similar objects and it seems that many of the enamels were detached from their settings so that the settings could be sold. It is therefore no longer possible to link individual portraits of Louis XIV by Petitot which remain in the collection with individual records of purchase, but it seems likely that this miniature would have been one of the many enamels acquired by George IV. It is the earliest in sequence of the thirteen miniatures of Louis XIV by Petitot which still remain in the Royal Collection.