La Belle Zélie

Ingres painted this in 1806, at 26, just before he left for Rome on the scholarship that would keep him in Italy for years. The sitter is traditionally called Madame Aymon, though who she really was has never been settled. What stays with you is the finish, skin worked up like enamel, dark eyes turned steadily toward you, and Ingres already pushing the neck and shoulders into that smooth, almost boneless curve his critics would later attack as unnatural. He was still an unknown when he made it. The portrait only surfaced publicly after his death, at an 1867 memorial exhibition in Paris, and the museum in Rouen bought it soon afterward.