The Dream of Ossian

Ingres painted this in 1813 for a very particular spot, the ceiling of a bedroom being fitted out for Napoleon in the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The subject was one of the emperor's favourites, Ossian, the legendary Gaelic bard whose ancient poems had swept across Europe a few decades earlier. Ingres shows him slumped asleep over his harp while the warriors and gods of his verses gather in pale light above, half real and half dreamed. Napoleon never used the room. Within two years his empire was gone, the picture was taken down and sold off, and Ingres only managed to buy it back himself in 1835. He kept it, reworked it, and left it at his death to the museum of Montauban, the town where he was born.