Roger délivrant Angélique

The date on the rock at the right reads Ingres 1841, the year the painter came home. He had spent six years in Rome as director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici, and in 1841 he returned to Paris. The museum in Montauban, his home town, says plainly that it cannot tell whether he painted this small canvas before leaving Italy or after arriving in France. The composition was already more than 20 years old. In 1819 Ingres had shown the same scene from the Italian poet Ariosto: the knight Roger on his hippogriff, half eagle and half horse, driving his lance at a sea monster while the princess Angelica stands bound to the rock. That first version, about two metres wide, was bought for King Louis XVIII and now hangs in the Louvre. This one is barely half a metre tall, and the town of Montauban bought it at a public sale in 1844.