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Painting of embracing couple in room with paintings

A light-skinned woman sits on the lap of a light-skinned man inside a dim room. The woman wears a green velvet off-shoulder dress and a yellow head scarf. Her brown eyes gaze at the viewer. The man, who has shoulder-length light brown hair, a black cap, and a black cape with red detail, embraces the woman. He looks over his shoulder at a canvas on the right. It shows a lightly drawn image of the woman he holds. Behind the couple, another painting of a woman leans against the wall. A window on the left opens onto a cityscape.

Gallery Text

This composition, the first of six versions, articulates Ingres’s conception of the art of painting. For him, the oeuvre of the Renaissance artist Raphael was the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Here Ingres draws on Raphael’s relationship with the woman known as “La Fornarina” (the Little Baker), which, according to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, led to the young artist’s death from an excess of lovemaking. Raphael has just sketched the famous portrait of her, and his beloved subject sits on his knee. But Raphael has eyes only for his own creation, which, like Ingres’s representation of its model, meets the viewer’s gaze. This triangle of glances is complicated by the presence of the Virgin in Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair, seen against the back wall, where she resembles the artist’s lover.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.252
People
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, French (Montauban 1780 - 1867 Paris)
Title
Raphael and the Fornarina
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1814
Culture
French
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/299807

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2200, European and American Art, 17th–19th century, The Emergence of Romanticism in Early Nineteenth-Century France
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
64.8 x 53.3 cm (25 1/2 x 21 in.)
frame: 88.6 x 76.8 x 9.5 cm (34 7/8 x 30 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: l.l.: Ingres
  • inscription: Inscribed in black paint at right:...A[ROMA].

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Count de Pourtalès-Gorgier (1814-1865), sold; [his sale March 27 - April 4, 1865, Paris,no. 271] sold ; [through Charles Pillet?]; to Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild; by descent to his daughter-in-law Baroness James de Rothschild; by descent to her son Baron Henri de Rothschild, sold; [through Martin Birnbaum]; to Grenville L. Winthrop, 1931, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.252
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

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Publication Histo