Raphael and the Fornarina

Ingres finished this small scene in Rome in 1814, the year Napoleon's empire fell apart around him and French artists in Italy suddenly had no emperor to serve. He turned instead to the painter he worshipped above all others, Raphael, dead for nearly three centuries. Here Raphael sits with the baker's daughter said to be his mistress on his knee, but his eyes have already left her for the canvas on the easel, where he is painting her portrait. Ingres copied that portrait within the portrait from a real Raphael he knew well. He returned to this subject again and again across his long life, reworking the same embrace. The model's calm, boneless pose is pure Ingres, not Raphael at all.