Gesù tra i dottori

Ingres signed this in 1862, when he was 82 years old, and it had been on his mind for 20 years. The scene is from the Gospels, the boy Jesus found in the Temple in Jerusalem calmly holding forth among the grey-bearded scholars. It is hard not to read the old painter into it, a lifelong defender of strict drawing and classical order surrounded by younger artists moving on without him. Ingres kept the surfaces cool and the lines exact, the way he had argued for his whole career. He would live only five more years. He left the picture, along with hundreds of his drawings, to his home town of Montauban in southern France, where they still hang in the museum that bears his name.