Портрет Лоренцо Бартолини

The two men had trained together in the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David, and they stayed close. In 1805 Ingres, then in his mid-twenties, painted his friend the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini seated at ease, one hand resting near a small plaster figure. That fragment is said to come from the relief Bartolini submitted for the Prix de Rome, the prize that sent French artists to study in Italy. For the manner of the portrait Ingres looked past his own teacher, borrowing the calm, close-focused style of the Italian Renaissance, of painters like Bronzino, rather than David's grand public mode. Within a couple of years both friends had moved to Rome, where Bartolini would build a long career as a sculptor and Ingres would stay for most of the next two decades.