lived, however, as he soon broke with David on matters of style. This
difference of opinion involved Ingres’s embrace of what he believed
to be a truer and purer Greek style than what David employed. The
younger artist adopted flat and linear forms approximating those
found in Greek vase painting (see Chapter 5). In many of his works,
Ingres placed the figure in the foreground, much like a piece of low-
relief sculpture.
Ingres exhibited his huge composition Apotheosis of Homer (FIG.
30-7) at the Salon of 1827 (see “Academic Salons,” Chapter 31, page
823). The painting presented in a single statement the doctrines of
ideal form and of Neoclassical taste,and generations of academic
painters remained loyal to that style. Raphael’s School of Athens (FIG.
22-9) served as the inspiration for Apotheosis of Homer.Enthroned be-
fore an Ionic temple, the epic poet Homer receives a crown from Fame
or Victory. At the poet’s feet are two statuesque women, who personify
theIliad and theOdyssey,the offspring of his imagination. Symmetri-
cally grouped about him is a company of the “sovereign geniuses”—as
Ingres called them—who expressed humanity’s highest ideals in phi-
losophy, poetry, music, and art. To Homer’s left are the Greek poet
Anacreon with his lyre, Phidias with his sculptor’s hammer, the phi-
losophers Plato and Socrates, and other ancient worthies. To his far
right are the Roman poets Horace and Vergil, and two Italian greats:
Dante and, conspicuously, Raphael, the painter Ingres most admired.
Among the forward group on the painting’s left side are Poussin
(pointing) and Shakespeare (half concealed), and at the right are
French writers Jean Baptiste Racine, Molière, Voltaire, and François de
Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon. Ingres had planned a much larger and
more inclusive group, but he never completed the project. For years he
agonized over whom to choose for this select company of heroes in
various humanistic disciplines.
GRANDE ODALISQUE As a true Neoclassical painter, Ingres
condemned “modern” styles such as Romanticism. But despite his
commitment to ideal form and careful compositional structure,
Ingres also produced works that, like those of Gros and Girodet, his
contemporaries saw as departures from Neoclassicism. One of those
paintings was Grande Odalisque (FIG. 30-8). Ingres’s subject, the re-
clining nude figure, followed the tradition of Giorgione and Titian
(FIG. 22-40). The work also shows Ingres’s admiration for Raphael
in his borrowing of that master’s type of female head (FIGS. 22-7
and 22-8). The figure’s languid pose, small head and elongated
limbs, and the generally cool color scheme reveal his debt to Parmi-
gianino (FIG. 22-43) and the Italian Mannerists. However, by con-
verting the figure to an odalisque(woman in a Turkish harem), the
artist made a strong concession to the contemporary Romantic taste
for the exotic.
This rather strange mixture of artistic allegiances—the combi-
nation of precise classical form and Romantic themes—prompted
confusion, and when Ingres first exhibited Grande Odalisquein
1814, the painting drew acid criticism. Critics initially saw Ingres as
a rebel in terms of both the form and content of his works. They did
not cease their attacks until the mid-1820s, when another enemy of
the official style, Eugène Delacroix, appeared on the scene. Then
they suddenly perceived that Ingres’s art, despite its innovations and
deviations, still contained many elements that adhered to the official
Neoclassicism—the taste for the ideal. Ingres soon led the academic
forces in their battle against the “barbarism” of Delacroix, Théodore
Géricault, and the Romantic movement. Gradually, Ingres warmed
to the role his critics had cast for him, and he came to see himself as
the conservator of good and true art, a protector of its principles
against its would-be destroyers.Art under Napoleon 78330-8Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,Grande Odalisque,1814. Oil on canvas, 2 117 – 8 5 4 . Louvre, Paris.
The reclining female nude was a Greco-Roman subject, but Ingres converted his Neoclassical figure into an odalisque in a Turkish harem, consistent
with the new Romantic taste for the exotic.
1 ft.