Pope Pius VII Holding a Papal Chapel

A Franciscan friar comes forward to kiss the pope's feet before he begins his sermon. That is the moment Ingres chose inside the Sistine Chapel, with Pius VII enthroned under a red canopy at the top of red-carpeted steps, cardinals seated and standing on both sides, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment filling the wall beyond. He had painted the chapel once before, in 1814. This second version he started in Rome in 1819 and finished in Florence the following year, yet the signature at the lower right still reads Rome 1820. Ingres was then living in Italy on small commissions and pencil portraits of visitors. The picture was shown at the Salon of 1824 without appearing in the printed catalogue, and around 1828 he took it up again in Paris, retouching it and enlarging the canvas.