A red and black chalk drawing of Louis XIV. On discoloured, worm-holed paper, suggesting the drawing was previously framed and hung. Inscribed in pen and ink at top left: Louis the XIIIId drawen by the Life at Versallis in the year 1684 by GKneller.On the verso, an unintelligible inscription in Italian.

By the 1680s Sir Godfrey Kneller was the leading court painter at the court of Charles II. In 1684, Kneller was sent by the King to the court at Versailles to make a portrait of the French king, Louis XIV. The painting is untraced today, but copies are at Drayton House, Northants, and Heckfield Place, Hants. This drawing was presumably made in preparation for the painting. The drawing was lent by Queen Victoria to the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition in 1857 where it was described as being lent from 'Hampton Court', where it must have hung until being transferred to the Print Room at Windsor in the first half of the twentieth century.