Ingres, Rome and his Musician Friends

Résumé En

Our paper will present Ingres' two stays at the Villa Medici, first as a pupil between 1806 and 1820, after his First Grand Prix de Rome in 1801. Admirable portraits of musicians mark this period, those of Victor Dourlen, Auguste Panseron, Niccolò Paganini and Gioacchino Rossini, but also group portraits showing the elite society that surrounded him (the family of Lucien Bonaparte, the Stamaty family, that of Prince Wenzel von Jaunitz-Rietberg). During his second stay in Rome, between 1835 and 1841, when Ingres was Director of the Villa Medicis, he drew portraits of his students and friends: Ambroise Thomas, Luigi Cherubini, Franz Liszt, Charles Gounod. We should not forget his own self-portraits, and the sketches where he is surprised by his pupils practicing music (Jean Alaux and Paul Flandrin). The analysis of these works will be done with the support of the biographies of the painter by his contemporaries, and thanks to multiple correspondences, that of Ingres of course, private and institutional, that of his pupils and friends. This will be an opportunity to highlight Ingres' "classicism" in both painting and music and to take a renewed "critical" look at the famous metaphor of "Ingres' violin" coined by Émile Bergerat, Théophile Gautier's son-in-law, at the beginning of the 20th century.