Francesca da Rimini y Paolo Malatesta

Ingres painted this scene from Dante at least seven times between 1814 and 1850, which covers most of his working life. It is the moment in the fifth canto of the Inferno when Paolo kisses his brother's wife Francesca over a book they were reading together, and the husband, Gianciotto, comes through the door behind them with his sword drawn. This small panel is a version Ingres made for himself around 1846, when he was 66 and the acknowledged head of the classical camp in French painting. He kept it. After his death his second wife, Delphine Ramel, sold it to the painter Leon Bonnat, who was buying obsessively for his native Bayonne. Bonnat took the preparatory drawing too, and left the whole collection to the town.