Oil on canvas, in a carved and giltwood frame, 48cm by 73.5cm.
Courtois trained as an artist, but then became a soldier.
He left his native France in 1637 and travelled to Italy, where he resumed painting and was active mainly in Rome and Florence, where he was regarded as the foremost painter of battle scenes at the time.
He also painted portraits and history paintings.
The painting of cavalrymen and foot soldiers before a town appears in the 1763 Burghley Inventory: ‘The Japan Closet….a battle by Borginione.’
