Akademische Studie eines männlichen Torsos

This is a school exercise, painted in 1801 by a young man of 21 still learning his trade. Ingres had come up to Paris to study under Jacques-Louis David, the towering painter of the Revolution, by then working for Napoleon. Every student ground through the same discipline, the academie, a nude painted slowly from a live model posed in the studio. Ingres was unusually good at it. The school gave a prize for the best painted torso, and he took it in 1800 and again in 1801. That same year he also won the Prix de Rome, the ticket to study in Italy. But the state was broke from years of war and could not pay to send him. He did not reach Rome until 1806.