Portrait of Madame Duvaucey
Portrait of Madame Duvaucey is an 1807 oil on canvas painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It shows Antonia Duvauçey of Nittis, the lover of Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier, then ambassador to the Holy See. Duvaucey is positioned in a flat pictorial space, gazing frontally at the viewer, dressed in lavish clothing and accessories. The portrait is the first female portrait painted during the artist's stay in Rome.[1] Portrait of Madame Duvaucey is acclaimed for exhibiting her enigmatic charm, and as "not a portrait that gives pleasure..[but]...a portrait that gives rise to dreams".[2]
Duvaucey stares out directly at the viewer with a sly and suggestive smile. Set against a flat grey background, the perspective of the portrait is very shallow overall. It is framed by the inwards swoops of the cured rose and gold
Typical of Ingres' female portraits, her anatomy seems almost boneless. Her arms are out of proportion, with her left arm, at the viewer's right, far longer than her right. Her neck is too elongated and doesn't seem strong enough to support her head. In a prelude to his later "Odalisque" paintings, her facial features seem almost arabesque.[1] The contemporary critic Théophile Gautier wrote of her that "there is no woman that M. Ingres has painted, but the likeness of the ancient Chimera, in Empire dress.[3]
Ingres was paid 500
Forty years after its completion, Duvaucey was in urgent need of money, and visited Ingres in Paris to sell the painting. Ingres recognised her, and found a buyer in Fredric Reisit, whose collection became the Musée Condé, Chantilly where the painting remains today.[1]
See also
References
Notes
Sources
- Betzer, Sarah. Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-2710-4875-8
- Jover, Maneul. Ingres. Harry N. Abrams, 1990. ISBN 0-8109-3451-5
- ISBN 978-0-300-08653-9
- Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip (eds). Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. ISBN 978-0-300-08653-9