Mademoiselle Jeanne-Suzanne-Catherine Gonin

When Ingres painted this young woman in 1821 he was living in Florence, a long way from the Paris success he wanted. Salons back home had been cool on his big history pictures, so he kept himself afloat with pencil portraits and intimate oils like this one, work he privately considered beneath his real ambitions. The sitter was Jeanne Gonin, from a Swiss Protestant family the artist knew well. She was engaged to be married, and the portrait may mark it. All the Ingres precision people prize is here in small compass, the cool clear light, the gold chain, the lace collar, and above all those carefully crossed hands. He would wait almost until his fifties before France finally embraced him.