Portrait of Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, duc de Bouillon

Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon, was among the most significant French Protestant military commanders of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, his career spanning the Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War. Blondel's 1835 portrait for the Versailles Museum of History represents the duke at the height of his military prominence, using the grand-manner military portrait conventions appropriate to a figure of this stature. The Bouillon dukes were among the most powerful territorial magnates of France, and their inclusion in the Versailles gallery reflected the programme's commitment to documenting the nobility's contribution to national history alongside that of the monarchy. The portrait was likely based on earlier authentic likenesses of the duke that Blondel would have consulted in historical sources.

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century military portrait had a distinct visual language: armour of specific historical type, military baton as symbol of command, landscape or fortress background. Blondel researched the period's material culture to construct a historically plausible image, though his academic technique imposes a nineteenth-century smoothness on seventeenth-century content.