Louis XV of France
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defined as his 13th birthday) on 15 February 1723, the kingdom was ruled by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as Regent of France.
Cardinal Fleury was his chief minister from 1726 until the Cardinal's death in 1743, at which time the young king took sole control of the kingdom.
Alexis Simon Belle
During the years 1716 to 1719, Belle received many commissions from Jacobites in exile after the unsuccessful rising of 1715. By then, the Old Pretender was himself living in Italy.
During the 1720s, Belle's work was increasingly for the French nobility. He painted the young King Louis XV, and much of his work was engraved, showing that he had by then a high status in France. He painted Louis XV's one-time fiancée Mariana Victoria of Spain, whom he later did not marry; he worked also for Jacobites in France, and as late as 1724 signed a portrait of Marie-Charlotte Sobieska (James Edward Stuart's sister-in-law) "pictor regis Britann" (painter to the king of Britain). In 1731, Belle made two copies of portraits by David of James Edward Stuart's two young sons, Prince Charles Edward Stuart and Prince Henry Benedict Stuart.