자화상

Ingres was in his mid-eighties when he made this, and he owed it. Elected to the academy in Antwerp, he was expected to supply a self-portrait for its museum, and he was years late. In July 1865 he wrote to apologise, blaming his age and failing health. What he sent was not a fresh study but a near-copy of a portrait he had painted several years earlier, itself based on a photograph taken back in 1855. And he made one change worth noticing. The face he gives himself here looks distinctly younger than the man of 84 who was painting it. It is among the last portraits he finished. He died early in 1867, past 86.