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Lot Essay
The present composition has been known until now through a later version executed by Ingres in 1864, now in New York, Althea Schlenoff Collection. The discovery of this prototype provides an explanation for a problem which has long puzzled Ingres scholars. It has been frequently stated that in 1851 Ingres included in his oeuvre a print after a Philemon and Baucis which he had drawn in 1801, now in the Muse Crozatier, Le Puy, but never turned into a picture. He regarded it as equal to his most monumental work. Two subsequent versions of that specific composition were executed by the artist in 1851 for the print by Reveil and in 1856 for Mme. Hennet in a watercolour now at the Muse Bonnat, Bayonne. There are only slight differences between each of these drawings.
The 1864 version, however, was very different, showing Mercury seated instead of standing, Philemon holding a knife rather than a pitcher, Baucis covering her head with a veil and Jupiter in a more rigid and Olympian pose; the landscape on the left was no longer seen through a door and beyond a wooden fence but through a window. The only possible explanation for these differences was the assumption that between 1856 and 1864 Ingres had chosen to rethink the composition and alter it dramatically. The reappearance of the present sheet dated 1816 reveals that Ingres had created two versions of the same subject which he regarded as two completely independent works. As often found with Ingres, two radically different visions of the same composition exist. One is rather hellenistic, seen in the sensuous and fluid delineation of Jupiter's body and Mercury's back, the other more neoclassical and idiosyncratic, in which the poses of both gods are stiffer and more hieratic. Ingres thus devises two poetical interpretations of a single theme just as a composer writes the same melody in the minor or major mode.
The story of Philemon and Baucis derives from Book VIII of the Metamorphoses of Ovid and tells the story of two peasants whose ready hospitality to the gods was rewarded by Jupiter and Mercury.
The 1864 version, however, was very different, showing Mercury seated instead of standing, Philemon holding a knife rather than a pitcher, Baucis covering her head with a veil and Jupiter in a more rigid and Olympian pose; the landscape on the left was no longer seen through a door and beyond a wooden fence but through a window. The only possible explanation for these differences was the assumption that between 1856 and 1864 Ingres had chosen to rethink the composition and alter it dramatically. The reappearance of the present sheet dated 1816 reveals that Ingres had created two versions of the same subject which he regarded as two completely independent works. As often found with Ingres, two radically different visions of the same composition exist. One is rather hellenistic, seen in the sensuous and fluid delineation of Jupiter's body and Mercury's back, the other more neoclassical and idiosyncratic, in which the poses of both gods are stiffer and more hieratic. Ingres thus devises two poetical interpretations of a single theme just as a composer writes the same melody in the minor or major mode.
The story of Philemon and Baucis derives from Book VIII of the Metamorphoses of Ovid and tells the story of two peasants whose ready hospitality to the gods was rewarded by Jupiter and Mercury.