Le Christ bénissant

1834 was a bruising year for Ingres. He had labored long on a large religious canvas, the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, and when it hung at the Paris Salon the reception was cold. Stung, he accepted the directorship of the French Academy in Rome and prepared to leave France for years. This small Blessing Christ carries the date of that same year. Christ faces us straight on, two fingers lifted, entirely still, in the frontal manner Ingres loved in early Italian altarpieces and above all in Raphael, the painter he studied more closely than any other.