Study of a Man's Head and Torso

In August 1797 a 17-year-old from Toulouse reached Paris and was taken into the studio of Jacques-Louis David. The Republic was five years old. David, who as a deputy had voted for the king's execution, had come through the Terror and a spell in prison and was back at the head of French painting, then at work on his huge canvas of the Sabine women. What his pupils did all day was work like this: a head and torso painted from a living model, no story, no setting, the figure built up piece by piece. Ingres stayed about four years. In 1801 he won the Prix de Rome.