Description: The elegant portraits, serious nudes, and compelling history paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) are universally acclaimed for their resplendent aesthetic quality. Trained in the studio of the French revolutionary painter Jacques-Louis David, Ingres infused his mentor's hard neoclassical style with sensuousness, and his incomparable draftsmanship revealed a genius for meaningful gestures. Ingres's legacy extended into the 20th century, influencing the works of such artists as Manet, Degas, Cezanne and Picasso.

In this fascinating and elegantly written text, based on the wealth of documentary material at the Musee Ingres, Georges Vigne traces Ingres's life and work from his formative years in Rome. Vigne analyzes the qualities that have stirred controversy over Ingres's paintings since his emergence as an artist in the first years of the 19th century, including Ingres's admiration of Raphael and early Italian painting, the remarkable nuances of line and bold color combinations that earned him designations such as "primitive", the arresting eroticism of his images, and the participation of his devoted studio in his work.

This magnificently illustrated and authoritative volume is the most complete work ever on Ingres and one of the most thorough monographic studies of any painter of his era.

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