Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (Montauban 1780-1867 Paris)

This large drawing is the cartoon for the picture of the same subject in the National Gallery, London (G. Wildenstein, Ingres, New York, 1954, no. 227, fig. 75). The London picture, painted in the 1830s, is of exactly the same composition and size as the ex-Bodmer drawing.
Ingres painted a number of pictures of this theme, all very close in composition to the present work. The earliest example is probably a horizontal version painted in 1819 in Rome, now in the Louvre (Wildenstein, op. cit., no. 124, pl. 52). In 1841 Ingres painted another picture of exactly the same composition as the London canvas, but larger and oval in format (Wildenstein, op. cit., no. 233, fig. 74). Ingres also painted many studies of the nude figure of Angelica chained to the rocks, the latest example dated 1859 (Wildenstein, op. cit., nos. 126, 127, 127bis, 287, pl. 17, figs. 73, 76 and pl. 16).