The Head of Christ

Ingres' impressive study is for the head of Christ, the central figure in one of the artist's most important early religious paintings, Jesus Delivering the Keys to Saint Peter (Musée Ingres, Montauban; fig. 1). The massive altarpiece (110 x 85.5 cm.) was commissioned in 1817 on the initiative of Charles Thevenin, the Director of the French Academy in Rome. The commission was to decorate the church of the French convent of the sisters of the Sacré-Coeur in Rome, La Trinità dei Monti, which was then being restored at the personal expense of the French ambassador. The painting was originally to have been frescoed, but was eventually executed in oil on canvas. Completed in 1820, Ingres always regarded it as one of his masterpieces ('This is my best work' he wrote to a friend in June 1819), and he desperately pulled diplomatic strings to have it sent to Paris for the Salon of 1827, ultimately unsuccessfully. (Roman law, he was informed by the Comte de Pastoret who had intervened on his behalf, 'prohibited the removal of a picture exhibited in one of the chapels where Mass is celebrated'.) Other fruitless attempts were made to get the sisters to relinquish the canvas, but following further ambassadorial negotiations, it was finally returned to the French authorities in 1841, shortly before Ingres' departure for Paris; the convent agreed to hand over the painting in exchange for a full-scale copy (made by Jean Murat). Transferred to the Luxembourg Palace in 1842, after Ingres had touched it up and enlarged it, it was moved to the Louvre in 1874, and finally to Montauban in 1959.

Not surprisingly, numerous oil sketches and preparatory drawings (fig. 2) by Ingres survive for this complex, multifigural composition, though it is not always possible to distinguish whether they were made before 1820, around 1837 in preparation for the print of the painting engraved by James Pradier in 1846 (for which Ingres supplied drawings), or in 1841-2 when Ingres substantially reworked the altarpiece. The present oil sketch has always been presumed to have been made in preparation for Ingres' original composition and can be dated to around 1819-20. Of the 73 drawings related to the project in Ingres' bequest to Montauban, 20 are for the figure of Christ, and reveal the artist's tireless and inspired study of Raphael.

In addition to the present sketch - which Ingres bequeathed to his widow, and which was included in the great retrospective exhibition of his work held at the École des Beaux-Arts less three months after his death in 1867 - oil studies survive for the hands of Christ (private collection), and for his right foot (Princeton Art Museum). Other sketches are known for the heads of the apostles in the museum in Angers, in the Louvre, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. It is not clear when this Head of Christ was enlarged from its original, smaller format - during the original campaign of 1819-20, or in 1841-2, when Ingres was rethinking his composition - what is clear is that the additions where made by Ingres himself. Besides the fact that he appended his signature to the right side of the bottom addition, several of the known oil studies for Jesus Delivering the Keys to Saint Peter have similar additions, including the Study for the Head of Saint Matthew in the Louvre (see Wildenstein, op. cit. 138, fig. 81). Indeed, the altarpiece itself was substantially enlarged on the left and right sides by the artist when it was returned to him in 1841; the following year, Ingres observed with satisfaction in a letter to a friend, 'I have just completely finished my Saint Peter and I can say this time to my contentment and that of my best judges'.