How are you?
On every Thursday,
I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 41st story for
this week is “Grande
Odalisque” by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
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| Self-Portrait, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres |
“Grande Odalisque” is an oil painting by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in 1814 depicting an odalisque, a court lady in the household of the Ottoman sultan.
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| Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire |
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| Ottoman Empire |
This painting was considered by Ingres' contemporaries as signifying Ingres'
shift from Neoclassicism, the style he’d been identified with for much of his
career, toward exotic Romanticism.
This painting was commissioned by Napoleon's sister, Queen Caroline Murat of Naples (Caroline Bonaparte).
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| Caroline Murat, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun |
Although the actual pose of a reclining woman looking back over her
shoulder directly referred to “Portrait of Madame Récamier” by Jacques-Louis
David in 1800, Ingres was inspired from the works such as “Dresden Venus
(Sleeping Venus)” by Giorgione, and “Venus of Urbino” by Titian.
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| Portrait of Madame Récamier, Jacques-Louis David |
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| Dresden Venus (Sleeping Venus), Giorgione |
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| Venus of Urbino, Titian |
Ingres portrays an odalisque
in languid pose with distorted proportions in this painting. Her small head,
elongated limbs and a combination of cool colors show the influences of
Mannerists such as Parmigianino, whose “Madonna with the Long Neck” was also
famous for anatomical distortion.
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| Madonna with the Long Neck, Parmigianino |
When it was first shown, it received wide criticism from critics due to its elongated proportions and lack of anatomical realism, and they considered Ingres as a rebel against the contemporary style of form and content.
When the painting was first exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1819, one critic criticized the work as "This painting indeed has nothing that constitutes imitation of a real female, with no bones, no muscle, no blood and no life."
Instead of ignoring such
anatomical realism, Ingres used abundant, even light to soften the volume of
the woman's body, and long lines to convey the woman's body curvature and
sensuality.
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| Reclining odalisque, Gustave Léonard de Jonghe |
It was estimated that the woman in this painting has two or three more vertebrae than the normal woman, and critics at that time believed that this was a simple mistake of Ingres. However, recent studies have shown that such elongations were deliberately distorted by Ingres.
The results of measuring real women’s proportions showed that the woman in the painting was drawn in a state which her body could not be replicated when referring to the curvature of the spine and rotation of the pelvis, and that her left arm was shorter than the right.
In addition, contrary
to the previous claims, this study concluded that the woman in the painting was
longer by five instead of two or three vertebrae, and that the excess affected
the lengths of the pelvis and lower back, instead of merely the lumbar region.
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| Odalisque, Jules Joseph Lefebvre |
There are also claims that
the distance between her gaze and her pelvic area is a physical expression of
the depth and complexity of the woman's thoughts and emotions.
This painting was also used
for the first color poster of the feminist art group "Guerrilla
Girls". The Metropolitan Museum poster, produced by this group in 1989,
puts a gorilla mask on Ingres' odalisque and posed the question "Do women
have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?"
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| 1989 Poster "Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?", Guerrilla Girls |
Currently, this painting is
owned by the Louvre Museum, Paris which purchased the work in 1899.
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| Louvre Museum |
Thank you.
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