#ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867) Virgil reading The Aeneid before Augustus, Livia and Octavia, 1811 Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867) La Source, began in 1820 and finished in 1856 Musée d'Orsay, Paris

"the great loba"

Count her fingers. Both hands clasped together near the edge of that terracotta surface - every one accounted for with the anatomical precision of an obsessive. Ingres didn't paint hands. He engineered them. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's "Angelique" is a puzzle dressed as a nude. The subject comes from Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" - Angelica chained to a rock, awaiting a sea monster. But Ingres strips the story almost bare. No monster, no hero. Just a woman, a hint of a shackle at her feet, and that impossible S-curve running from her ankles to her outstretched wrists. Follow it and you'll notice her spine bends in ways vertebrae politely decline. The torso is elongated by at least one lumbar vertebra that doesn't exist. He did the same to the Grande Odalisque and dared anyone to complain. Light from the left sculpts her front and left side while the right dissolves into shadow against warm stone. Her body becomes a sundial - the shadow tells you exactly where Ingres wanted your eye to travel. The kind of image that rewards the person who stands too close and asks too many questions. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Virgil reading The Aeneid, Ingres

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres - "The Source", 1820-1856