Portrait of the Countess of Tournon

Ingres painted this in Rome in 1812, when the city was not really Italian at all. Napoleon had annexed the Papal States and installed a French administration, and Ingres, stranded far from Paris, took portrait work where he could find it. His sitter was the mother of a senior official in that occupying government. She was in her mid-fifties, and Ingres made no effort to soften her: the slightly bulging eyes, the strong nose, the faint shadow on her upper lip are all there. What he gives her instead is presence. She meets you with a shrewd, amused, entirely self-possessed look, wrapped in a deep red velvet dress he renders with almost tactile care.