Alexander the Great presenting Campaspe to Apelles
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres French
Not on view
In this drawing, which dates to Ingres’s last year as a student at the Académie de France in Rome, Alexander the Great (at center) offers his favorite mistress, Campaspe, to Apelles, the painter from whom he had commissioned her portrait. According to the narrative from Pliny’s "Natural History," over the course of the sittings, the painter had fallen in love with his subject, prompting Alexander to present Campaspe to him as a sign of his esteem. Adopting a friezelike composition suited to the classical subject matter, Ingres achieved the crisp contours of the figures by cutting the composition in silhouette and pasting it onto brown-washed paper. Ingres never pursued the subject in paint and so likely intended this drawing as a finished work.
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