Study of a nude young man with a halo, half-length, his arms raised to the left

This drawing is a study for one of the stained-glass windows depicting the archangel Raphael in the chapel of Saint-Ferdinand in Paris (fig. 1). The chapel was commissioned to commemorate the sudden death of Ferdinand-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, on 13 July 1842, and it was only a few days after the accident that the King entrusted Ingres with the designs of four virtues and twelve patron saints adopted by the Royal family. The stained-glass windows were executed by the manufacture of Sèvres after Ingres’ designs. The archangel Raphael, not strictly a saint but part of the Roman calendar, was patron to the Duke of Nemours (Louis-Charles-Philippe-Raphael d’Orléans), Ferdinand’s brother. Raphael is depicted standing with his hands joined and raised; he is the first saint depicted on the stained-glass window to the right when entering the chapel. A cartoon for the window, along with the cartoons for the other saints, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (for the commission and the cartoons see Foucart, op. cit.). Further figure studies for the archangel are at the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban (inv. 867.2488; see G. Vigne, Dessins d’Ingres. Catalogue raisonné des dessins du musée de Montauban, Paris, 1995, p. 301, figs. 1694,1695), and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 59.23.54; Foucart, op. cit., p. 81, fig. I.3).

Fig. 1. Stained-glass window with the archangel Raphael. Saint-Ferdinand, Paris.