Rome and A Tale of Two Artists

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 - 1867

Pope Pius VII in the Sistine Chapel, 1814
Oil on canvas
Overall: 74.5 x 92.7 cm (29 5/16 x 36 1/2 in.) framed: 98 x 117 x 8.3 cm (38 9/16 x 46 1/16 x 3 1/4 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

While this painting was being painted by Ingres, the pope was being held prisoner in France after having been removed from Rome by French forces following Napoleon's annexation of the Papal States.

When the painting was exhibited in Paris, the Pope was released and back in Rome.

Unlike his teacher, David, Ingres did not involve himself in politics

A self -portrait of Ingres is on the left. He holds a halberd.

In 1806 Ingres was sent by the French Academy to Rome. He used the four years of his stay to study the work of the Renaissance masters, Raphael above all, but he was also influenced by medieval and Byzantine art.

Ingres is widely regarded as the greatest portrait painter of the nineteenth century and one of the most brilliant draftsmen of all time. Ingres' art asserts the supremacy of academic tradition, linear contour, and design

A contemporary art critic, Lenormant, who had a mission to encourage religious art, was rather critical of this painting. He found fault with the air of emotional and spiritual detachment of the painting. He said: "M. Ingres painted the pontifical Mass in the Sistine Chapel- nothing more, nothing less." The critic then went on to consider why Ingres did not develop into a religious painter like Ingres`s great hero, Raphael. Perhaps Ingres was more concerned with art than anything else: Art for the sake of Art.

Perhaps the restraint and detachment was because of his times. He lived through the passionate times of the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the reestablishment of the French monarchy. He knew the dangers of partisanship. Perhaps in those times, Art became his refuge.

However there is another explanation. It was painted during a low point of his career. Ingres was forced to depend for his livelihood on the execution, in pencil, of small portrait drawings of the many tourists, in particular the English, passing through postwar Rome.

His friend, the painter François-Marius Granet (French, 1775–1849) was more successful doing touristic scenes of Rome than he was doing highbrow history paintings, so he tried to beat Granet at his own game. However, although this painting was relatively successful, Granet trumphed him with his painting,The Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome (see below).

François-Marius Granet (French, 1775–1849)
The Choir of the Capuchin Church on the Piazza Barberini, Rome
1814–15
Oil on canvas
77 1/2 x 58 1/4 in. (196.9 x 148 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum, New York

Pope Pius VII loved it. The King of Spain ordered a copy.

Ingres couldn't stand it. ''Fashion and infatuation have loaded him with goods and honours since he did a painting of the 'Capuchins,' '' he fumed about Granet. ''He is a compound of selfishness and ambition such that, with his 'Capuchins,' he has pushed me aside in Rome.''

The Met describes Granet`s painting in this way:

"François-Marius Granet, a notably pious man, conceived this subject in reaction to anticlericalism during Napoleon's occupation of Rome.

The French authorities banished the Capuchin order from the church of the Immaculate Conception, near the Piazza Barberini, even billeting troops there for a time.

Nevertheless, this painting of the church's interior was purchased by the emperor's sister Caroline Murat, queen of Naples, for her brother Louis Bonaparte, who had seen it exhibited in the painter's studio, where it created a sensation at the end of 1814.

Pius VII, the same pope who had been forced to preside over Napoleon's coronation a decade earlier, asked to meet the artist as a result of the exhibition. Granet went on to paint perhaps a dozen or more versions of this subject, most on commission. It is without doubt his most famous composition"

Whilst staying in Rome, Granat got possession of a cell in the convent of Capuchins mentioned above. The convent was inhabited almost exclusively by artists. It is the Church of the convent which gave him the inspiration for the painting.