In Grande Odalisque Ingres Emphasizes Which Form Considered the Most Beautiful in Art at the Time?
"Drawing is the probity of art. To draw does not mean but to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist simply of line: cartoon is also expression, the inner course, the airplane, modeling. See what remains later on that!"
1 of 6
"At that place are not 2 arts, there is only ane: that which has as its foundation the beautiful, which is eternal and natural. Those who seek elsewhere deceive themselves, and in the most fatal manner."
2 of six
"Let me hear no more of this absurd proverb: 'Nosotros need the new, we must follow our century, everything changes, everything is changed.' Sophistry - all of information technology! Does nature change, do light and air change, have the passions of the human heart inverse since the time of Homer? 'Nosotros must follow our century': but if my century is wrong? Because my neighbor does evil, am I therefore obliged to practise it also? Because you are ignorant of virtue as well equally beauty, I must be ignorant in turn, I must imitate you!"
3 of vi
"Describe for a long time before thinking of painting. When one builds a solid foundation, one sleeps peacefully."
iv of 6
"Fine and delicate gustatory modality is the fruit of education and experience. All that nosotros receive at nascency is the faculty for creating such taste in ourselves and for cultivating it, just equally nosotros are built-in with a disposition for receiving the laws of guild and for conforming to their usages. Information technology is up to this point, and no further, that 1 may say that taste is natural."
5 of 6
"Raphael was not only the greatest of painters: he was dazzler, he was good, he was everything!"
half dozen of 6
Summary of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
With a daring blend of traditional technique and experimental sensuality, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres reimagined Classical and Renaissance sources for 19th century tastes. A talented draftsman known for his serpentine line and impeccably rendered, illusionistic textures, he was at the centre of a revived version of the ancient debate: is line or color the most important element of painting? Yet Ingres was non always successful; his experiments with abstracting the body and introducing more than exotic and emotionally circuitous subjects earned harsh criticism in his early career. In truth, his work is best understood as a hybrid between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. It was only as the foil to the more dramatic Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix that Ingres came to be widely accepted as the defender of traditional painting and classicism.
Accomplishments
- Ane of the almost talented students in the studio of Jacques Louis David, Ingres constitute early success, winning the coveted Prix de Rome on just his second endeavour. Nevertheless while Ingres would e'er reflect the classical style associated with David, he complicated his master's legacy by distorting his figures and in choosing narratives that bankrupt with the moral exemplars of his instructor.
- In pursuit of more beautiful forms and harmonious line, Ingres pushed the abstraction of the body across the idealism of the Neoclassical. He abstracted his figures, even departing from the plausible construction of the body, to emphasize graceful contours and a pleasant visual effect. This new level of liberty would encourage other artists to accept liberties with the human form, from Renoir (who was reportedly infatuated with Ingres) to the xxth century Surrealists.
- Despite his transgressions, when compared to the painterly brushwork and brilliant palettes of the Romantics, such as Eugène Delacroix, Ingres was undoubtedly connected to the classical tradition and academic manner. In the mid-xixthursday century, he came to represent the Poussinistes, who believed that the cerebral quality of the drawn line was more critical to a painting, opposed to the Rubenistes, who favored the emotional bear on of color. As the defender of tradition, Ingres updated Renaissance ideals for the modern era, in particular working later the model of Raphael.
Biography of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
The eldest child of the sculptor, painter, and musician Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique was built-in in 1780 in Montauban, a small town in southern France. Under his father's tutelage, he showed a talent for violin and a proclivity for drawing at a young historic period; his earliest-known signed drawing dates to 1789. His Parisian pedagogy at the Collège des Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes was cut brusk when the school airtight during the French Revolution. In 1791, Ingres's begetter sent him to nearby Toulouse, enrolling him in the Académie Royale de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture where he studied with the painters Guillaume-Joseph Roques and Jean Briant and the sculptor Jean-Pierre Vigan. He too continued his interest in music, performing second violin with the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse from 1794 to 1796. Ingres's musical abilities would later requite birth to the phrase "Ingres's violin," used to draw a biggy, but secondary talent, overshadowed past one's primary occupation; the term would later serve as the title for a famous 1924 Surrealist photograph by Human being Ray.
Important Art past Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Progression of Fine art
1806
Napoléon on his Purple Throne
Mayhap now the most iconic portrait of Emperor Napoléon I, Ingres's painting was originally dismissed as overly gothic, primitive, and even "barbarian." Opulently adorned, the newly crowned emperor is represented among a mishmash of Roman, Byzantine, and Carolingian symbols. The intention, to legitimize his claim to authority, is overshadowed past the strangeness of this imposing frontality; his pallid face emerges from layers of ostentatiously regal garb to wait by the viewer with a stony gaze.
Ingres'south painting was inspired by fine art historical depictions of power; it was a strategy similarly employed by Napoleon himself, who frequently used symbolism associated with the Roman and Holy Roman empires to reinforce his dominion. Pictorially, Ingres looks straight to the God the Begetter panel from Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (looted during the Napoleonic Wars, this altarpiece was part of the new Musée Napoléon); replacing God with Napoleon, encircled by the golden laurel wreath and throne, Ingres suggests his sitter's power, even divinity. This pose also recalled the legendary statue of Zeus at Olympia by the aboriginal Greek sculptor Phidias. Although that statue had been lost in antiquity, the Neoclassical interest in such relics made it a newly relevant and recognizable reference for the 19th-century viewer.
Coupled with these art historical references, the presentation of Napoleon's body and accessories underscores his ability. Indeed, Ingres uses every inch of the considerable, nearly 9' tall, sheet to project Napoléon's political and martial prowess, assembling an eclectic yet legible iconography: Napoléon's robes are of rich purple, a color long associated with royalty and the Roman empire; a heraldic shield begetting the crest of the Papal states can be seen to a higher place his left shoulder, a reference to his position every bit King of Italy; his Legion of Accolade medal rests on a lavish ermine collar; and the manus of justice sits atop a rod that crosses subtly with a bejeweled sword (modeled after the sword of Charlemagne, a ruler that the emperor sought to emulate), representing a balance of fairness and might. Near pointedly, Napoléon grasps a scepter in his correct hand topped with a statuette of Charlemagne who holds the fleur-de-lis (associated with the regal Bourbon family unit) and the Imperial orb. This scepter, believed to have belonged to Charles IV, positions Napoleon equally the successor to the French royal family unit as well as the historical line of Emperors.
Despite these art historical precedents, Ingres'due south portrait was soundly criticized at the Salon of 1806; it was fifty-fifty dismissed as "unintelligible" by his own teacher, Jacques-Louis David. As the Neoclassical style began to ebb, with tastes preferring a more natural and contemporary representation of power, Ingres'southward complex compendium of historical motifs seemed retrograde and outdated. Even though it was the target of scorn, with this complicated web of iconography and symbolism, Ingres ushered in a new twist on the Neoclassical and demonstrated his interests in art historical references and stylistic experiments.
Oil on canvas - Musée de l'Armée, Paris
1808-27
Oedipus and the Sphinx
Determined to prove his talent, the immature Ingres defended himself to history painting, the nearly respected genre at the Académie. True to his neoclassical preparation, Ingres selected his subject field from Greek mythology, but his pick of subject departs from the stoic heroes of David. Hither we meet the tragic hero Oedipus confronted with the riddle of the Sphinx. The dire threat he faces is suggested by the ominous pile of human remains, compounded by Oedipus's companion, shown fleeing in terror in the background. Although the painting nevertheless centers on the classical male nude, the narrative is more complicated than David'southward moral universe and suggests a step towards the complicated psychologies of Romanticism. Oedipus's correct answer will let him to escape death and continue on the route to Thebes, yet his destiny is doomed.
When Ingres sent the painting to Paris as part of his get-go envoi de Rome, a typical practise for winners of the Prix de Rome, it received lukewarm feedback; critics claimed that the contours were non stiff plenty, the lighting was lackluster and the relationship between the figures was not sufficiently articulated. Ingres addressed these remarks later in his career when he returned to the sheet in the mid-1820s and enlarged it on three sides. What resulted is a highly engaging paradigm that demonstrates his knowledge of the catechism as well as his command of the nude male, a staple in the neoclassical Académie.
Oedipus'southward at-home composure and commanding pose projects the themes of the tale that were closely tied to mail-Revolutionary France: the predominance of human intelligence and its role in successful civilizations. And however, Ingres does not shy away from the darker side of the story; the dramatic chiaroscuro, created by an upward-facing light (a lesson learned from studying the work of Guercino in Rome), lends the painting an ominous overtone. It subtly foreshadows Oedipus's tragic fate, namely, his marriage to his mother Jocasta and eventual decease. Sigmund Freud, who would re-popularize the Greek myth in his conception of the Oedipus Complex, owned a print afterward Ingres's painting, which hung most the couch in his consulting room.
Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris
1814
La Grande Odalisque
Within the long tradition of the female nude, Ingres'southward version demonstrates both his bookish grooming and his penchant for experimentation. Indeed, the depiction of the idealized nude extends back to classical depictions of Aphrodite in aboriginal Greece. The reclining woman had been a popular motif since the Renaissance; Titian's Venus of Urbino was certainly an of import example for Ingres. Here, Ingres continues this tradition past drawing the figure in a series of sinuous lines that emphasize the soft curves of her body, as well as by situating the woman in a lavish infinite, adorned with lustrous fabrics and intricately detailed jewels. Though he renders the trunk with the sculptural surface and clean lines associated with Neoclassicism, Ingres's painting likewise bankrupt the expectations of pictorial illusionism by distorting the torso beyond the plausible. Ingres has taken David'south directive to idealize the human form to an extreme, so much that he was admonished by critics when he exhibited this painting at the Salon of 1819. The woman would need two or three extra vertebrae to achieve such a dramatic, twisted pose. So too do the figure's legs seem out of proportion, the left improbably elongated and disjointed at the hip. The issue is paradoxical: she is at once strikingly beautiful and eerily strange.
For the sake of propriety, respectable depictions of the female nude had always been removed from the everyday by labeling them Venus, Diana, Suzannah, or some like mythological or religious narrative that justified their nakedness. Further distancing Ingres from his Neoclassical roots, La Grande Odalisque'south setting creates that necessary difference, not past referring to the ancient by, but through Orientalism. During Napoleon's empire, France consolidated its colonial possessions, first a highly politicized and problematic fascination with "the other." Ingres's odalisque, a term that refers to a concubine in a harem, is festooned with the trappings of what was then considered "the Orient," namely, Turkey and the Near East. Her peacock feather fan and bejeweled turban, as well equally the delicate hookah pipe at far right, are markers of exoticism that let for her nudity without offending the viewer (this painting was deputed by Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples and sister to the Emperor Napoleon). To compare, when Édouard Manet painted his 1863 Olympia as a mod, French nude woman who gazed directly at the viewer, it was considered an immoral outrage.
Ingres'southward ability to merge elements of Neoclassical linearity and Romantic sensuality, resisting an easy categorization, provided a model for hereafter avant-gardes. This particular painting has also get a flashpoint for discussions on the male person gaze and the female subject field, frequently appropriated by 20th-century artists every bit a means of art historical and institutional critique. The Guerrilla Girls, a group of bearding women artists, transposed a gorilla head onto the body of the Odalisque for their affiche Do Women Have To Exist Naked to Go into the Met Museum? (1989), exposing the sexism and erasure of women in the contemporary art globe past declaring, "Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female." The group recreated the slice in 2011 with an equally damning set up of statistics, again using Ingres's nude by mode of illustration.
Oil on sail - Musée du Louvre, Paris
1814
La Fornarina
Originally conceived as role of a series of paintings documenting the life of Ingres's idol, Raphael, La Fornarina shows the Renaissance main in the arms of his alleged mistress. Although Ingres ultimately abandoned the projection, he painted five or vi versions of this scene. It allowed him to showcase both his adoration for Raphael and demonstrate his mastery of the precise and illusionistic style.
Frequently quoting from the oeuvre of Raphael, Ingres positioned himself as the modernistic-twenty-four hour period descendent of the revered painter. In this work, he gives the viewer an intimate insight into the personal and professional person life of his idol. We are situated in Raphael's studio, his latest canvas barely begun on the easel before him. Nonetheless, Raphael's model, la Fornarina (the baker's girl) has risen from her pose to cover the artist. Raphael is all the same engrossed in his work: he holds a paintbrush in his hand, his gaze firmly fixed on his painting. On the other hand, his model looks out to the viewer. The focus, and perchance the sacrifices, of the artist is the underlying moral to this painting - Raphael (and maybe Ingres as well) must not abandon the loftier calling of art to pursue the pleasures of beloved and leisure.
The attention of these two main figures is farther complicated by the painted figures: Raphael'due south sketch and the Madonna of the Chair, visible in the background. Both are based on La Fornarina, and all three women stare at the viewer as reality and art are brought together. Of form, in Ingres's painting, all the figures are fictitious, just the point is made: for Raphael, and by extension, for Ingres, there is a seamless flow between art and life. That Ingres's own wife posed every bit the model for La Fornarina further emphasizes this connexion between the artists.
Oil on canvas - Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA
1824
The Vow of Louis XIII
When Ingres left Paris for Italian republic in 1806, he swore that he would not come dorsum until he was best-selling as a serious and important history painter. This 1824 altarpiece allowed his triumphant return, every bit this hometown committee for the Montauban Cathedral was highly celebrated. The awe-inspiring painting, which measures nearly 14 feet high, was a challenging subject that brought together historical and religious iconographies and spaces. The scene commemorates an iconic moment from the reign of King Louis 13 from 1638, when he pledged the dedication of France to the Virgin Mary. This act, which had been historic as an annual holiday prior to the Revolution of 1789, had recently been reinstated under the Restoration period, which returned the Bourbon kings to the French throne. It was, therefore, a historical episode with very specific contemporary significant, promising a divine benevolence and reinforcing the absolutist claim to dominion. The Vow of Louis Xiii demonstrates Ingres's ability to meld the historical and the contemporary, translating the classical scene into the simplified visual vocabulary of the 19thursday century.
The narrative required Ingres to carefully balance the composition betwixt the earthly realm of Louis XIII and the heavenly sphere higher up. Ingres created 2 different atmospheres to distinguish between the spaces, bathing the Virgin Mary in a warm, idealized glow and emphasizing the materiality and textures of Louis XIII in a more physical way. Over again, Ingres drew heavily from art historical precedents, closely modeling his Virgin on Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The comparison was successful and positioned Ingres as the modern-day descendant of the Renaissance tradition, an important distinction as 1824 also marked the rise of Romanticism.
Before the painting's installation in Montauban Cathedral, information technology was exhibited at the Salon of 1824, an early battleground between the traditions of Neoclassicism and the emerging challenges of Romanticism. Compared to the expressive colors and contemporary field of study of Eugène Delacroix's Scenes from the Massacres at Scio (1824), which were perceived equally troublingly revolutionary (fifty-fifty incendiary), Ingres's Vow was seen equally a bastion of tradition. Thus, despite the mixed reception of Ingres'south earlier works and his departures from the Neoclassical, Ingres became the smashing defender of the classical tradition, a reputation that would follow him throughout his career. The year after this success, Ingres was awarded the Legion of Honour and elected to membership in the Academy, securing his reputation.
Oil on canvas - Montauban Cathedral
1827
The Apotheosis of Homer
As the newly crowned defender of the academic tradition, Ingres was deputed to decorate a ceiling in the Louvre to coincide with the opening of the Musée Charles X. This museum intended to demonstrate the cultural superiority of French republic and thereby reinforce the legitimacy of its monarch. Disquisitional to this endeavor was the establishment of a continuum that stretched from the ancient earth to modernistic-24-hour interval France, and thus Ingres'south Apotheosis of Homer became a project of political and cultural legitimization. Its pantheon of Western culture celebrates the lineage of classical thinkers and draws heavily from Raphael's School of Athens (1509-1511) from the papal apartments in Rome.
Where Raphael's work centered effectually a dialogue between Plato and Aristotle, Ingres's cultural celebration honors Homer as the originator of Western civilization. He sits in the center of the composition, crowned with a laurel wreath by Nike, the goddess of victory, and flanked past personifications of his two masterpieces, The Iliad (at left, a sword resting beside her) and The Odyssey (at right, an oar resting against her leg). Homer is surrounded by over forty figures from the Western canon, including the Greek sculptor Phidias (holding a mallet), the cracking philosophers Socrates and Plato (turned toward each other in dialogue to the left of Phidias), Alexander the Great (at far correct in gilded armor), among others. Ingres also includes figures from more contempo centuries; below Alexander the Corking sits Michelangelo, drawing board in manus. William Shakespeare stands beside the painter Nicolas Poussin at bottom left, joined past Mozart and the poet Dantë. Ingres'south hero and inspiration, Raphael is dressed in a dark tunic joining easily with the Greek painter Apelles and between them, a mostly obscured effigy with a youthful face up is allegedly a portrait of the young Ingres himself.
Whether or non this is a cocky-portrait, Ingres has clearly defined his cultural ancestry and affirmed the superiority of classical values. Fine art historian Andrew Carrington Shelton has labeled the Apotheosis a "highly personalized aesthetic manifesto." Non only did this support the reign of his patron, Charles X, but it also strengthened Ingres'southward claim every bit the modern representative of this tradition and its deep cultural significance. While some critics found the work to be formulaic and potent, especially when compared to Delacroix's dynamic Expiry of Sardinapalus, shown in the 1827 Salon, information technology was also soundly dedicated by more politically and aesthetically bourgeois voices. Étienne Delécluze, a friend of Ingres and a highly regarded critic, upheld the Apotheosis as the expression of ideal dazzler, straight comparing Ingres to the artists who are included in his painting. At a moment in culture when classical values were giving way to more bourgeois taste and politics - embodied by the revolutionary contemporaneity of Romantic painting - Ingres stakes his claim and aligns himself with the Académie and its heroes.
Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris
1832
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin
There is a devil-may-care realism to this portrait, suggested by the informal preparation and slightly aggressive stance of the sitter. A somewhat gruff-looking older man, Monsieur Bertin sits hunched in a mahogany chair, legs splayed a bit indecorously; defying the protocols of formal portraiture, his jacket is crumpled and his waistcoat strains to contain his voluminous torso. At that place is footling idealization, but rather a potent sense of character; Ingres seems to draw once again from the example of Raphael, recalling the Renaissance portrait of Baldessare Castiglione. Indeed, despite its informalities, Ingres's Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is anything but careless; meticulously drawn - i tin can practically count the strands of gray hair falling in tousled locks - and highly composed, the artist famously struggled to perfect the pose and demeanor of his sitter, producing many preparatory sketches in diverse configurations.
The seemingly casual pose, later emulated by Pablo Picasso in his portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905-06), broke from the traditional repertoire of portrait poses. There is a startling immediacy that was far ahead of its time; every bit one of Ingres's students, Louis Lacuria, wrote in a letter to a fellow painter, "Let me tell you lot that I was ruined, dumbfounded, shattered, when I saw the portrait of Grand. Bertin de Vaux, when I saw that total and complete obedience to nature, that absolute self-deprival by the painter, that brush so completely mastered, I couldn't believe it." Apocryphally adventitious and impromptu, this pose was "invented" by Ingres and his sitter and provides a clear sense of this bourgeois businessman and the modern tempo of his life.
The critical response to the painting at the Salon of 1833, nonetheless, was less impressed by Ingres'southward verisimilitude; instead, critics rejected this naturalism and the monotone palette. This restrained use of color and the ascetic background - a far cry from the opulence of his Napoléon on his Imperial Throne (1806) - was interpreted as sociopolitical commentary. Bertin, a journalist and agog supporter of the July Monarchy, was an archetypal fellow member of the ascending bourgeoisie. Ingres's portrait was disparaged as overtly opportunistic and self-congratulatory, and was widely received equally representative of the new, bourgeois era. The painter Édouard Manet went and so far as to draw Portrait of Monsieur Bertin as the "Buddha of the cocky-satisfied, well-to-exercise, triumphant bourgeoisie."
Oil on canvass - Musée du Louvre, Paris
1852-63
The Turkish Bathroom
The Turkish Bathroom both summarizes Ingres's handling of the female nude and extends his legacy into the modernistic era. One of his most complex compositions, bodies seem to spill by the limits of the round canvas, the cramped spatial depth seems to multiply the plentiful flesh. Situating the viewer within an Orientalist interior, Ingres demonstrates his continued interest in colonialist themes. The open sensuality of the figures is striking, as their limbs intertwine to display an available, exotic eroticism.
Once more than, Ingres brings together elements of the Neoclassical and the Romantic. His signature sinuous line verges on the fluidity of an arabesque, although he maintains the sculptural surface and precise rendering of his training. Equally with his earlier female person nudes, Ingres takes artistic liberties when representing human anatomy - the limbs and torsos of the figures are distorted in social club to accomplish a more harmonious aesthetic - and nonetheless they are painted with the undetectable brushwork of an academician.
Never having traveled to the Virtually E or Africa, Ingres was inspired by the letters of the 18thursday-century aristocrat Lady Mary Montague, copying her writings on the Ottoman Empire into his ain notes. In ane letter of the alphabet, Montague described the crowded bath at Adrianople: "naked women in various poses... some conversing, others at their work, others drinking java or tasting a sorbet, and many stretched out nonchalantly." Ingres translated the sense of languid relaxation in the supine bodies of his figures, adorned in turbans and the richly embroidered fabrics associated with the imagined Orient.
The sensuous nature of this expansive array of female person flesh was too much for Ingres'south patron. Commissioned by Prince Napoléon in 1852, it was initially displayed in the Palais Purple until the Princess Clotilde objected. The painting was returned to Ingres, who continued to modify it extensively until 1863. He finally decided to radically alter the traditional, rectangular format of the painting into a tondo, augmenting the sense of pinch amidst the figures. Simply in 1905 was the painting displayed publicly; even and then, its debut at the Salon d'Automne was accounted revolutionary. Ingres was enthusiastically received past the emerging avant-garde as titillating and audacious in his treatment of flesh, abstraction of the torso, and celebration of female sexuality. In particular, the immature Pablo Picasso establish it compelling, creating a series of works that recall the subject, including his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). Ingres'southward painting also inspired the many odalisques and female nudes of the Fauve artist Henri Matisse.
Oil on sheet mounted on wood - Musée du Louvre, Paris
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