Ingres by Alexander Joseph Finberg — Read

This "portrait picture" was begun in Rome in 1839, but was only finished in Paris in 1842. The painter's first intention was to represent only the figure of Cherubini, but afterwards he had the canvas enlarged to make room behind the musician for the figure of the "Muse of lyrical poetry, mother of the sacred hymns." It is doubtful whether this addition is an improvement.

"The Apotheosis of Homer," the subject chosen for the Louvre ceiling, was begun and finished within the short space of a single year. The amount of work involved in making the preparatory studies and carrying through a work of such importance was enormous, and Ingres had never before displayed so much energy and decision. The conception of the picture was a noble one. It was to represent the spiritual ties which bind one generation of human beings to the other; to insist on the debt which each worker in the field of art and thought owes to his predecessors; to celebrate the real immortality of genius by showing the incessant action which it exerts on all the individuals who are successively born and developed by its influence. We must confess that Ingres has found a worthy plastic formula to express his highly abstract conception. He shows us the poets, painters, sculptors, philosophers, and great patrons of the arts grouped round the seat of the old blind poet. Each individual face, each gesture and pose, has been studied and thought out patiently, and executed with masterly skill. The terrible problem of grouping together so many different personalities and so many costumes of widely differing periods has been faced and overcome. The whole produces an effect of incomparable simplicity and grandeur.