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7
pictures he exhibited at the Salon were almost uniformly ridiculed, accused of being everything
from Gothic to Chinese, and his special non-political Neo-classicism was worked out in isolation.
In 1808 Ingres did one of his finest paintings, whose pose he revived again and again in later
works, the Valpincon Bather, named after the collection it first adorned. This lovely nude is drawn
with a subtle contour line delicately flowing over shoulders, back and legs. The surface is modelled
to porcelain smoothness, but is never hard; Ingres was always at his best with delicate flesh and soft
fabrics.
Ingres fancied himself a history painter, although his narrative pictures are weakened by his
inability to project a dramatic situation. A work that embodies his ideal programme of Neo-
classicism is the huge Apotheosis of Homer, painted in 1827 and intended for the ceiling of a room
of the Louvre. Ingres made no concessions to the principles of illusionistic ceiling perspective from
below. He preferred the High Renaissance tradition, as exemplified by Michelangelo. Before an
Ionic temple dedicated to Homer, the blind poet is enthroned, crowned with laurel by the muse of
epic poetry. Below him sit two women figures, the one with a sword, representing the Iliad, another
with a rudder the Odyssey. The geniuses from antiquity and later times whom Ingres considered
truly Classical are grouped around. At the lower right are grouped three French Classical writers.
Shakespeare and Corneille make the scene in the lower left-hand corner. The cool light of an ideal
realm binds the figures together in the kind of artificial composition that became definitive for
muralists even into the twentieth century.
Ingres was financially obliged to accept portrait commissions, which he considered a waste of
time, although today his portraits are accepted as his greatest works. He even drew portraits of
visitors to Rome, who trooped to his studio. Such pencil studies as the Stamaty Family of 1818,
show the exquisite quality of his line.
Ingres's paintings are perfect in colour. All the beauty of his colour and the perfection of his
form are seen in the portrait of Comtesse d'Houssonville, painted in 1845. She is posed in a corner
of her salon, in an attitude clearly derived from Classical art. No Dutch painter ever produced still
lifes more convincing than the vases on the mantle. The reflection in the mirror, going back through
Velazquez to van Eyck, reappears again and again in the nineteenth-century art, deeply concerned
as it was with the optical phenomena.
Although many of his subjects are drawn from the medieval history and poetry, dear to the
Romanticists, Ingres was resolutely opposed to their abandonment to emotion and to the artistic
sources on which they drew. Yet, the influence of Ingres later in the nineteenth century was very
great.
Make sure you know how to pronounce the foallowing words:
Dominique Ingres [
]; Athens [
]; Salon [
]; Delacroix
[
]; Velazquez [
]; Odyssey [
]; Iliad [
]; Eyck [
];
genius [
]; Romanticists [
]; Louvre [
]; exquisite
[
]; Shakespeare [
]; Corneille [
]; Renaissance [
];
prodigy [
]; apotheosis [
]; Gothic [
]; laurel [
];
Chinese [,
]; phenomena [
]; violin [,
]; perspective
[
]
NOTES
Vcdpinqon Bather – "Купальщица Вальпинсон"
Apotheosis of Homer — "Апофеоз Гомеру"
Stamaty Family - "Семья Стамати"
Comtesse d'Houssonville - "Портрет графини Луизы д'Oссонвиль"
Iliad - 'Илиада"
Odyssey - "Одиссея"
rudder [
] - руль
TASKS
I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.
1. Ingres remained faithful to Romantic ideals to the end of his life.