Portrait of the Sculptor Jean-Pierre Cortot

Jean-Pierre Cortot won the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1809 and went to live at the French Academy in the Villa Medici, where he got to know Ingres. On this small wooden panel Ingres paints his friend without the polish of a commission. The dark curls are brushed in loosely, the white collar falls open, and the young sculptor turns his head back over his shoulder to look straight at us. At the lower right he wrote his name, the year 1815 and the words à Rome. Cortot later carved for the restored Bourbon kings and then for Louis-Philippe. His marble Marie-Antoinette stands in the Chapelle expiatoire in Paris, and his Napoleon crowned by Victory is on the Arc de Triomphe. In 1936 the panel was bought for the fine arts museum in Algiers, and it has been on deposit at the Louvre since 1970.