La Esperanza

In July 1842 the eldest son of King Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orléans and heir to the French throne, was thrown from his carriage in the streets outside Paris and died of his injuries at 31. His family raised a memorial chapel on the very spot, and asked Ingres to design its stained-glass windows. This painting of Hope, a serene young woman in a white gown and green cloak gazing upward against a clear blue sky, is his full-size model for one of them. Ingres drew the figure with the smooth, exact line he was famous for, everything pared down so it would read at a distance once translated into coloured glass.