The Virgin Adoring the Host

The design began as a Russian commission. In 1841, while running the French Academy in Rome, Ingres was asked by the future Czar Alexander II for a small devotional picture, the Virgin bowing over the wafer of the Mass, flanked by the two patron saints of Russia, Alexander Nevsky and Nicholas. He showed it in Paris in 1842, then shipped it east, and afterward kept complaining that France had lost the thing. So he painted it again, more than once. This is the first of those repeats, made in 1852 as a gift for a friend, Louise Marcotte. For a French owner he quietly took the two Russian saints out and set two French saints in their place. The same Virgin adores the same Host, under a different country's protectors. Marcotte had just introduced the widowed painter to Delphine Ramel, and he married her the same year this little panel was done.