Canvas. 80¼ × 49¼ inches Dated 1812
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Madame Moitessier
Samuel H. Kress Collection
“Never has beauty more regal, more splendid, more superb, and of a type more Junoesque yielded its proud contours to the sensitive drawing of an artist.” So the poet Théophile Gautier described Ingres’ first portrait of Madame Moitessier. But Ingres destroyed it because the lady’s daughter, who was included, would not stand still for him. He produced this second picture in 1851, after six months of careful work. It perfectly embodies both his exacting perfectionism and French elegance during the Second Republic.
Ingres was seventy-one years old when he painted this. Evidently he admired Madame Moitessier, for she was one of the very few people he consented to paint in his latter years. He dreaded the arduous demands he imposed upon himself when doing a portrait. “Art is never nearer perfection,” he said, “than when it resembles nature so closely that it might be mistaken for nature itself.” Yet for Ingres, nature had to be refined through the classical tradition of art, and he sought to cast Madame Moitessier in the form of an ideal figure by Raphael. Despite astonishing realism in the hair with its flowers, in the lace and the jewelry, our eyes move over graceful Raphaelesque curving lines, which dominate the face and figure. By such means Ingres strove to unite the real and the ideal.
Canvas. 57¾ × 39½ inches Dated 1851
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)
Columbus and His Son at La Rábida
Chester Dale Collection
In 1491 Columbus, despairing of Spanish support for his voyage of exploration, was on his way to seek aid in France when he and his son Diego stopped at the monastery of La Rábida, near Huelva, in southern Spain. Delacroix shows them resting here after their exhausting journey. Columbus gazes thoughtfully at a map, while the prior, Juan Perez, behind him, is about to welcome him. Perez, who had been Queen Isabella’s confessor, was able to arrange a royal interview for Columbus so that ships and men were secured for the adventure.
Delacroix painted this in 1838, after a trip through Spain. Evidently the air of quiet mystery in a Spanish monastery caught his fancy, and he recreates it here. Unlike the Neo-Classicists, the Romantic Delacroix does not attempt to define his subjects exactly. In his painting, vague, suggestive forms are used to stimulate the imagination. His composition is not a linear design; it is spatial; and our interest is drawn into the space of this room to discover the whispered confidences of the monks, the mystery of dark corridors, and the kind reception of the weary travelers. Delacroix sought a “silent power which speaks alone to the eyes and gains and conquers all the faculties of the spirit.”
