Roger freeing Angelica

This large drawing is the cartoon for the picture of the same subject in the National Gallery, London (inv. NG3292; 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
present drawing. Ingres treated the subject, taken from Ariosto's Orlando furioso, in several works, the earliest of which being probably a horizontal version painted in Rome in 1819, now at the Musée du Louvre (ibid., 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 in the Musée Ingres, Montauban (ibid., 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). For a discussion of these related works, see also V. Pomarède and S. Guégan in Ingres, 1780-1867, exhib. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2006, pp. 180-185, under nos. 43-54, ill.

Fig. 1. Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, Roger freeing Angelica, National Gallery, London.