Porträt des Barons Joseph-Pierre Vialetès de Mortarieu

Ingres painted this in 1805, when he was 25 and impatient. He had won the Prix de Rome four years earlier, but the state had no money to send him south, so he stayed in Paris taking portrait commissions to live. The sitter was Joseph-Pierre Vialetès de Mortarieu, a friend from Ingres's home town of Montauban, wearing the red ribbon and star of the Legion of Honour. Within a year the young baron would be elected mayor of Montauban and would found the museum that today, filled with Ingres's own bequest, carries the painter's name. Ingres finally left for Rome in 1806, and did not see France again for 18 years.