Première pensée du vœu de Louis XIII

In 1820 the French government asked Ingres, then living in Italy, for a large altarpiece for the cathedral of his home town, Montauban. This small oil is one of his first attempts at the composition, a thought set down before the four years of work the finished picture would take. The subject is a royal promise. In 1638 Louis XIII placed France under the protection of the Virgin Mary, and Ingres shows the king kneeling to offer his crown and scepter up to her. In this early version she simply stands with her hands joined and no child in her arms, an idea he later changed, borrowing the pose of the Virgin from Raphael's Madonna di Foligno. When the full painting reached the Paris Salon of 1824 it was a triumph, and Ingres, long out of fashion, came home a celebrated man. He kept turning the design over in studies like this before he committed it to the great canvas.