Venere a Pafo

This began as something ordinary, a portrait of a young Frenchwoman named Antonie Balay, the daughter of a wealthy politician. Somewhere in the process the commission fell through, and Ingres, rather than waste the started canvas, turned the sitter into a goddess. He kept her real face and gave her the attributes of Venus, setting her at Paphos on Cyprus, the island where the ancient cult of the goddess was centered. In one of his notebooks he wrote 'sketch for a Venus, portrait,' and underlined the word portrait. He left it unfinished, and a pupil, Alexandre Desgoffe, painted in the temple and greenery behind her. Ingres was past 70 when he set it aside.