Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Given by the artist to Monsieur Artaud de Montor, in 1816;
Camille Marcille, Gasville-Oisème;
Sale, Monaco, Sotheby's, 3 December 1989, lot 520

A. de Montor, Histoire de Dante Alighieri, Paris 1841;
H. Delaborde, Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine, Paris 1870, no. 206;
E. Gatteaux, Collection de 120 dessins, croquis et peintres de M. Ingres, Paris 1875, reproduced, pl. 118;
C. Yriarte, Françoise de Rimini dans la légende et dans l'histoire, Paris 1883, p. 69, reproduced;
H. Lepauze, Ingres, sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris 1911, p. 192;
L. Hourticq, Ingres, Paris 1928, p. 51;
H. Naef, 'Paolo und Francesca zum Problem der schöpferischen Nachahmung bei Ingres', Zeitschrift für Kunstwissenschaft, vol. X, Berlin 1956, pp. 97-108, reproduced, fig. 4;
Ingres, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, 1967-1968, p. 156, no. 110;
Ingres in Italia, exhib. cat., Rome, Accademia di Francia, Villa Medici, 1968, p. 122, no. 86;
M.-C. Chaudonneret, Ingres - Paolo et Francesca, Bayonne 1979, p. 3, reproduced;
In Pursuit of Perfection. The Art of J.A.D. Ingres, exhib. cat., The J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, and traveling, 1983-84, p. 70, reproduced

Small but highly finished, this intimately executed yet powerful drawing of the ill-fated lovers Paolo and Francesca relates to a subject that Ingres returned to repeatedly during his long career.  It is a perfect, jewel-like work that encapsulates the artist’s approach to Romantic subjects of this type, and it is also extremely well preserved. Ingres himself clearly felt that this was a drawing of some considerable significance, as is clear from the fact that he presented it to his friend, the notable scholar Artaud de Montor, in 1816.

The infamous tale illustrated in this drawing is taken from the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno, where we read how Francesca, the reluctant wife of the deformed Gianciotto Malatesta, Duke of Rimini, fell in love with her husband’s younger brother, Paolo; Gianciotto, however, encounters the pair in the throes of their “innocent love” and enraged by the sight, kills them both with a single blow of his sword.

The subject was one that Ingres first represented in a painting of 1814, now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly (fig.1), and returned to a number of times, in several other paintings and drawings.  Subsequent versions of the Chantilly composition, showing the figures in more or less the same arrangement but in different settings and costumes, include a canvas of 1819, in Angers,¹ and others, undated, in the Barber Institute, Birmingham² and the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne.³  Then, as was so often was the case when Ingres particularly liked a subject, he revisited the theme rather later in his career, painting at least three versions of a second composition, in which the two main figures, though still similarly posed, are shown in reverse to the earlier paintings, and much closer to the viewer, in three-quarter length.  The primary version of this later composition, usually dated to around 1845, is in the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York,⁴ while another, possibly executed as late as 1856-7, is now in a New York private collection.⁵

The present work, the second surviving drawing known to relate to the composition of Paolo and Francesca, was aptly given by Ingres in 1816, to Artaud de Montor, the French translator of the Divine Comedy and Secretary to the Ambassador in Rome.  The charming dedication, made out to Artaud by Ingres and written by the artist on his own decorative mount, is still an integral part of the drawing, adding both to the aesthetic appeal as well as the very personal nature of the work.  Unlike the earliest known drawing of the subject, now housed in the Louvre,⁶ in which the composition is somewhat awkward and the interaction between Paolo and Francesca lukewarm to say the least, the present work portrays the lovers as a perfect match. Ingres also develops the figure of the jilted Gianciotto, who emerges from the shadows in the act of drawing his sword, a sinister, somewhat deformed man, in stark contrast to the genetically blessed Paolo and Francesca.  Ingres’ handling of the interior in which the scene is set has also developed markedly from the Louvre drawing and its somewhat Spartan interior, with the artist instead deciding to add a far richer decoration to the wall behind Paolo and Francesca, on which an elaborately patterned tapestry hangs with the family coat of arms above. Indeed, this sumptuous decoration, as well as the generous application of wash, differentiates the present work from all of the other known drawings of this subject by Ingres, in which graphite is the predominant medium with only some featuring very light touches of wash in places.

Whilst Ingres, like any accomplished artist, used the medium of drawing for a multitude of different practical purposes, the present work does not seem to fit into his graphic oeuvre as one might expect, either in the context of a preparatory composition, or indeed a carefully executed presentation drawing.  Instead, much like lot 186, it seems to shed light on a more intimate avenue of the artist’s personality, in this instance his propensity for presenting a carefully drawn depiction of an utterly fitting subject to an even more carefully chosen recipient.  Artaud would not only have treasured this drawing as a work of art executed by an extraordinary artist, but also for the aptness of the subject depicted.  It is safe to say that in the 200 years that have passed since this work was executed it has not lost any of its original charm or beauty, making it just as alluring and intimate an image now as on the day it was created.

^1. In pursuit of Perfection.., exhib. cat., op. cit., p. 72, fig. 6, reproduced

^2. Ibid., p. 71, fig. 4 and p. 170, no. 19, reproduced

^3. Ibid., p. 75, fig. 13, reproduced

^4. Ibid., p. 77, fig. 17 and p. 173, no. 22, reproduced

^5. Ibid., p. 77, fig. 16 and p. 174, no. 23, reproduced

^6. Ibid., p. 70, fig. 1