French School Of The 17th Century Portrait Of A Military Man.

Identification of this portrait with Denis Heurtault, squire, lord of Ia Tripeterie, married around 1650 with Françoise d'Orsanne, from an old family of the nobility of Berry. His coat of arms, which appears on the portrait, is "Azure with a golden chevron accompanied by three silver crescents, the one at the point supporting a carnation hand adorned with silver holding a handful of ears of corn of the same."
Denis Heurtault, a gentleman at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, was master of the King's Hotel and alderman of Bourges, but above all provincial commissioner of the artillery of France, a position under which he is honored in the registers and historical memoirs of his time, and which would explain the cuirass he wears on his chest, while the Heurtaults, in the middle of the 17th century, distinguished themselves more in medicine and the magistracy.