Palazzo Reale in Milan will devote an exhibition to the art of Ingres and artistic life at the time of Napoleon

From March 12 to June 23, 2019, Palazzo Reale in Milan will host the exhibition Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Artistic Life at the Time of Napoleon.

The restrospective aims to present the artist who was most inspired by Raphael and to give the public an understanding of the artistic life of the years at the turn of the 19th century, which was full of novelty. Especially in Milan, a city that played a fundamental role through its political and artistic reorganization. Milan was strongly reshaped in that period in its monuments, green spaces and urban infrastructure, starting with the new Brera Art Gallery, and Italian artists were also involved in this renewal. Appiani in painting and Canova in sculpture made extensive use of this “policy of the arts,” attributable to Napoleon Bonaparte’s art of governing. The art of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres is placed in this context: in the exhibition, the painter of the odalisques, in his modernity, also reveals his Italian-ness, an imprint that makes him a key figure in artistic life before, during and after the Empire.

On June 12, 1805, after being crowned in Milan, Napoleon I declared that he wanted to “Frenchify Italy.” The expression is certainly brutal, but it testifies, in that historical context, to the desire to accelerate transformations in public and cultural life on the part of the General who became Emperor and then King of Italy. Combining the legacy of the Revolution and authoritarian despotism, indeed his policies had an immediate and lasting impact even on this side of the Alps. Precisely because of its breadth and the function attributed to the arts, an extraordinary encounter developed between the different trends that made up European modernity in the season of neoclassicism, of which Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), Antonio Canova (1757-1822), and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) were the points of reference.

Ingres is an integral part of these intersecting histories, without which today’s Europe would be incomprehensible. With the exhibition, the painter of odalisques, in his modernity, also reveals his “Italian-ness,” an imprint that makes him a key figure in artistic life before, during and after the Empire. Born in 1780 in southwestern France, in Montauban, Ingres demonstrated an extraordinary talent for drawing at an early age. By 1797 he was in Paris in David’s circle. In 1800 he competed for the prix de Rome and in 1806, after completing the great Napoleon in sacred costume, he was finally in Rome, where he could further his studies and passion for Raphael. Sent to Italy under the Empire and then involved in the imperial building sites in Rome, Ingres decided to remain “Italian” until 1824, only to return later to direct the Villa Medici. Of artistic life in this period, we now have a comprehensive view, which no longer opposes the severe and Apollonian component, represented by David and Canova, to the more “modern” or more surprising aspects, represented by Girodet’s eccentricities and Ingres’s eroticism, oneiricism and taste for the macabre, the outburst of women painters and the reinvention of the female nude. Given that it proclaimed itself as a continuation of the ancients, the “paradoxical modernity of neoclassicism” (Marc Fumaroli) demands, in short, to be appreciated in its tensions, its contradictions, its solar and dark duality.

In order to document the great stylistic and thematic variety of the "new classicism," the exhibition is divided into several sections. The first part highlights the invention of the new figurative language between the Ancien Regime and the French Revolution in which David is the protagonist together with his closest pupils, with a lexicon made of virile bodies and great energy. But the “new man” these paintings aim to represent is also expressed through the evolution of portraiture. Very soon a kind of pre-Romanticism will come to counterbalance the exaltation of the citizen devoted to his countrymen. Girodet embodies this turn, preceding Gros and Prud’hon in the exploration of the fantastic, drama and melancholic retreat. This leads to the astonishing Dream of Ossian, one of Ingres’s masterpieces on display in the exhibition. Another decisive phenomenon of this season is the momentum and success of women painters and in particular Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842), from 1774 the official portrait painter of Queen Marie Antoinette. Her career soon had to deal with the rivalries of her environment, but it would have been unimaginable outside the society of the 1770s, which was much more open than is generally believed.

The Italian campaign and Napoleon figure prominently in the next sections, with some famous portraits including those by Appiani. Works by Greuze, Canova, Gerard, and Finelli are devoted to the other capital of the Empire, with some drawings by Ingres. One room is reserved for the figure of Giovanni Battista Sommariva, starting with Pierre Paul Prud’hon’s portrait and Canova’s Tersicore. The exhibition path thus reaches the solemn and magnificent portrait of Napoleon in sacred costume, preceded by a series of preparatory drawings by Ingres.

In the final part, the exhibition takes on a monographic character and consists largely of works by Ingres exceptionally from the Museum of Montauban, beginning with a series of extraordinary male portraits, followed by a nucleus of drawings and then female portraits, of Venuses and Odalisques, as well as an 1818 painting depicting the death of Leonardo da Vinci, all the more significant in the year in which his fifth centenary is being celebrated.

In a way Ingres takes the legacy of David and his best pupils (of which he himself was a part) to the ultimate stage of estrangement and eroticism. The exhibition aims to demonstrate how his purported classicism is an illusion, revealing the colorist behind the draughtsman and showing his religious painting along with “troubadour” scenes near odalisques with long necks and salient hips. The exhibition includes more than 150 works, including more than 60 paintings and drawings by the great French master, brought together through international loans from some of the world’s greatest collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Muséand du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris in addition to the aforementioned Montaubaun Museum, from which the largest nucleus of works comes, and from major Italian museums such as the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, the Musei Civici in Brescia, and again from private collections. The exhibition catalog is published by Marsilio Editori.

More than150 works, including more than 60 paintings and drawings by the great French master, brought together through international loans from some of the world’s greatest collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée du Louvre, the Muséand d’Orsay, the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris; as well as the aforementioned Montaubaun Museum, from which the largest nucleus of works comes, and major Italian museums such as the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, and the Musei Civici in Brescia, as well as private collections.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Artistic Life at the Time of Napoleon is promoted by the City of Milan - Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and Civita Mostre e Musei, in collaboration with StArt and the Ingres Museum in Montauban. The exhibition is curated by Florence Viguier-Dutheil, Chief Conservator of Heritage and Director of the Musée Ingres in Montauban, and is supported by a Scientific Committee composed of Adrien Goetz, member of the Institut de France - Académie des Beaux-Arts, Stéphane Guégan, art historian; Frédéric Lacaille, Curator of the Musée national du Château de Versailles; Isabella Marelli, Curator of the Pinacoteca di Brera; and Gennaro Toscano, University Professor and scientific and cultural consultant at the National Library of France, Richelieu.

For info: www.mostraingres.it www.palazzorealemilano.it

Hours: Monday from 2:30 to 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Tickets including audioguide: Full 14 euros, reduced 12 euros for children up to 26 years of age, the over-65s, teachers, the disabled, military personnel, law enforcement officers not on duty, FAI and Touring Club members, holders of tickets participating in the “Lunedì Musei” initiative (Museo Poldi Pezzoli and Museo Teatrale alla Scala), and holders of special agreements. Special reduced 10 euros for Abbonamento Musei Lombardia cardholders, Orticola members with valid card for the current year. Free for children under 6 years old.

Image: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne (1806; oil on canvas, 260 x 163 cm; Paris, Musée de l’Armée)

Palazzo Reale in Milan will devote an exhibition to the art of Ingres and artistic life at the time of Napoleon

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