Venere Anadiomene

1806

A chilly reception at the Salon of 1806

At the Salon of 1806 Ingres showed his Self-Portrait, the Rivière family portraits and Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne to a very chilly reception: David was severe, the critics hostile, and Chaussard called his style gothic and accused him of wanting to make art regress by four centuries. Ingres had left for Rome just days before the Salon opened.

1806–1810 · Formazione

French Academy in Rome

1813

Marriage to Madeleine Chapelle

The acquaintance began by letter: Ingres drew Madeleine Chapelle's portrait from descriptions in her letters, and when they met in September the drawing matched the original; they married in December. Madeleine wrote to her sister that Ingres was an artist of enormous talent, neither a spendthrift, nor a drunkard, nor a libertine.

29 August 1820

The commission for “The Vow of Louis XIII” for Montauban Cathedral

The French Ministry of the Interior commissioned Ingres to paint an altarpiece for the cathedral of his native Montauban on the theme of the Vow of Louis XIII. The commission, which took four years, changed his life and brought him back to the canons of Neoclassicism.

12 November 1824

“The Vow of Louis XIII” at the Salon of 1824

Ingres showed the picture to which he had given four years at the Salon on 12 November 1824, alongside Delacroix's Massacre at Chios, and it was dubbed the “Salon of the Romantic battle”. Admirers and critics alike said the same of him: “the Raphael of our day” and “the best antidote to the Romantic threat”.

1834

The failure of “The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian”

Ingres worked for ten years on the grand Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian as the summation of all his skill, but at the Salon of 1834 it was attacked by both the Neoclassicists and the Romantics. In anger he announced that he would no longer accept public commissions or take part in the Salon.