Ingres: “Calmness is the main beauty of the body”

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“Calmness is the main beauty of the body.”
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Ingres —who received training from Jacques-Louis David and was an admirer of Raphael— is one of the leading proponents of neoclassicism (when talking about neoclassicism, David is always mentioned, and then Ingres).

And as a neoclassical painter, he learned from the classics that great emotions and sufferings are better expressed through restrained, intimate postures than through scandalous gesticulations. (We can see the opposite during the Baroque: artificial and theatrical gestures).

Due to this apprenticeship, a serene atmosphere is usually perceived in his works. And by painting that serenity, he discovered that the secret of beauty could be found in calmness, as we can see in this painting.

Ingres was fascinated by the female nude and its erotic charge, the invitation to pleasure. And he dared to show it “without excuses,” without a context justifying nudity, such as a mythological scene or a biblical story. His nudes are among the first in history that do not have that kind of “justification”, they are nudes and that is it.

Because of this type of passion and sentimentalism, we can see that, despite being one of the referents of neoclassicism, part of his work ended up being a transition towards Romanticism.

It is surprising how Ingres achieved to imitate all sort of textures in an unrivalled way. On the other hand, he did not paint the female body in a perfect way; he lengthened it, stretched it, he even deformed it to achieve more elegance and sensuality.

But calm was for him the first manifestation of beauty. An enriching lesson for those of us who live in a chaotic and overcrowded, confusing world, where almost everything, even beauty, tries to attract attention by aggressively bursting in, stunning the senses.

Image: The Bather of Valpinçon (1808)

Recommended links:

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Grande Odalisque, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Fundamental Painters of Neoclassicism.

Stories behind Works of Art: The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon, Jacques-Louis David.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: The Raft of the Medusa,  Géricault.

Stories Behind Works of Art: Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse.

Matisse and the Odalisques.

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