Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867)
La Vierge adorant l’hostie (The Virgin Adoring the Host)
1852
Oil on canvas, 40.3 x 32.7 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Repetition with variants of the Virgin painted in 1841 for the future Tsar Alexander II (Pushkin Museum, Moscow).
This small, jewel-like devotional painting was made as a gift for Ingres’s friend Louise Marcotte, who introduced the artist to Delphine Ramel, whom he married in 1852. The Raphaelesque composition is based on one Ingres first painted in 1841 for the future czar Alexander II, which includes the two patron saints of Russia, Alexander Nevsky and Nicholas (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow). For this version, Ingres replaced the Russian saints with two French ones. He would go on to paint four more variants, as well as, in 1855, a watercolor for Madame Ingres herself (Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass.). (MET)
Compare:
Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867)
La Vierge à l’hostie
1841
Pushkin Museum, Moscow
Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867)
La Vierge à l’hostie
1854
Musée du Louvre, Paris