Madame Moitessier

Ingres took 12 years over this single portrait. He was commissioned around 1844 to paint Madame Moitessier, the wife of a rich Paris merchant, and at first he did not want the job at all, until he met her and was won over. Then he kept stalling. Fashions changed while he worked, so the dress you see is not the one he began with, and a small daughter who was originally in the picture was painted out. He finally signed it in 1856, when the sitter was no longer the young woman he had first met. In the mirror behind her he shows her profile, a quiet second view of the same face. It has hung in the National Gallery in London since 1946.