Portrait de Joséphine Nicaise-Lacroix 1813

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres made this portrait of Joséphine Nicaise-Lacroix with graphite on paper, likely in France sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Ingres was a leading academic painter, and this work demonstrates the formal precision and idealization of the neoclassical style that dominated French art institutions at the time. Consider the soft, even light and the smooth, almost porcelain-like quality of the skin. These features signal the sitter's elevated social status. We can ask ourselves, how did the institutions of art at the time, such as the Academy, shape the production and reception of portraiture? Was the role of portraiture to reinforce social hierarchies through the idealization of the sitter? Looking at auction records, letters, and other historical documents might reveal more about the social and institutional contexts in which Ingres operated and how his art served its public role.