Bildnis der Caroline Murat, Königin von Neapel

Caroline Murat, Napoleon's youngest sister, was Queen of Naples when she sat for Ingres in 1814, and the timing was cruel. Her husband Joachim Murat's grip on the throne was already slipping as her brother's empire came apart across Europe. The portrait was meant to broadcast her dignity as queen. Ingres shows her full length in black velvet, standing in a Naples apartment before a wide window that opens onto Mount Vesuvius smoking in the distance. Neither the sitter nor the painter thought it truly finished. Within a year Murat had lost his crown and been executed, and the picture vanished so completely that it was long presumed destroyed. It surfaced again only in 1987, when an art historian recognised it, and it remains in private hands.