Head of the Grande Odalisque

The full painting hangs in the Louvre. Ingres made it in 1814 for Caroline Murat, Napoleon's sister and then queen of Naples, and when he finally showed it in Paris in 1819 the critics were appalled. His reclining woman, they complained, had too many vertebrae, a back no real spine could account for. He had stretched her for the line rather than the anatomy. This roundel is a later version by Ingres of just her head and shoulders, the calm oval face turning back over one shoulder. Lifted out of that long, impossible body, the head looks simply serene. Ingres kept coming back to this figure for decades after the scandal had faded.