Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's paintings give drawing, contour, and the arrangement of figures a central role within nineteenth-century French art. His portraits attend closely to pose, fabric, objects, and the distinctive presence of the sitter, while adjusting space to serve the painted design. Madame Moitessier, completed in 1856, combines a patterned dress and carefully posed hand with a mirror that presents another view of her head. In The Apotheosis of Homer, commissioned for a Louvre ceiling, the poet is crowned amid an ordered gathering of figures from literature and the arts. The Vow of Louis XIII, made for Montauban Cathedral, gives his study of Raphael and earlier religious painting a sacred setting. Original drawings and oil studies reveal repeated observation and revision of bodies, drapery, and accessories. These preparations connect the controlled appearance of his finished works with a process of testing individual details and larger arrangements.