Ritratto di Madame de Senonnes

In 1814 Ingres was stranded in Rome. Napoleon's empire was collapsing around him, the commissions that had brought French artists to Italy were drying up, and he kept himself alive by painting portraits he privately thought beneath him. This is one of them. The sitter is Marie Marcoz, mistress and later wife of a royalist viscount, poured into deep red velvet, ringed fingers laid across her lap, her reflection floating in the mirror behind. Ingres signed it on a little card tucked into the mirror frame, marked Ing. Roma. The painting then vanished for decades. In 1853 a Nantes painter spotted it propped on the pavement outside an antique dealer's shop, recognised it, and the local museum bought it for 4,000 francs.