Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples
Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples is an 1814 oil on canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Caroline Murat, née Bonaparte, was the sister of Napoleon, and married Joachim Murat, a Marshal of France and Admiral of France, and later King of Naples. Caroline commissioned the portrait as part of an effort to convey her standing and worth to reign as Queen of Naples during an unstable political climate.[1]
Long considered lost or destroyed since the fall of Murat in 1815, the painting was rediscovered in 1987 by the art historian Hans Naef.[2] It is now in a private collection in New York.
Commission
Caroline was an art lover, and in 1814 commissioned a number of paintings from Ingres, her favored artist. These include his Grande Odalisque, its now lost sister piece La Dormeuse de Naples,[3] and Paolo and Francesca.[4] The painting was completed shortly before the 1815 collapse of the Naples regime after Napoleon's empire crumbled following his defeat of the Battle of Waterloo. Joachim was executed by firing squad in October of that year (his wife lived until 1839). Consequently, Ingres's was not paid for his earlier commissions.[2] The painting was begun in Naples,[5] and completed after he had moved to Rome in May 1815.[6]
Ingres' created several preparatory studies, including close-ups of her face, and full sketch of the family.[6] Due to the artist's exacting and precise approach and technique, the undertaking was long and slowly moving. Both Caroline and Ingres considered painting to be unfinished.[1]
Description
Her regal pose is reminiscent of Napoleon in Ingres' Bonaparte, First Consul of 1804.[7] Ingres shows her in full length, dress in a long, high waisted black velvet dress and pelisse. Her expression is pious, while her black hat is trimmed with ostrich feathers. She stands in the royal apartment in Naples, before a large bay window which looks out to Mount Vesuvius. The painting is filled with luxurious, prestige items appealing to both Italian and French taste. Moorish influence can be seen in the heavy velvet and lace.[8]
See also
Notes
Sources
- Dahlin, Brittany. "Caroline Murat: Powerful Patron of Napoleonic France and Italy". Brigham Young University, 2014.
- Conisbee, Philip. Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. ISBN 978-0-300-08653-9
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paintings
- The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles (1801)
- Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808)
- Jupiter and Thetis (1811)
- Romulus' Victory Over Acron (1812)
- Virgil reading The Aeneid before Augustus, Livia and Octavia (1812)
- The Dream of Ossian (1813)
- Raphael and La Fornarina (1813)
- Paolo and Francesca (1814–1819)
- Don Pedro of Toledo Kissing Henry IV's Sword (1814)
- Aretino and Charles V's Ambassador (1815)
- Henry IV Receiving the Spanish Ambassador (1817)
- The Death of Leonardo da Vinci (1818)
- Roger Freeing Angelica (1819)
- The Dauphin's Entry Into Paris (1821)
- The Vow of Louis XIII (1824)
- The Apotheosis of Homer (1827)
- The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian (1834)
- The Illness of Antiochus (1840)
- The Odyssey (1850)
- Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII (1854)
- The Half-Length Bather (1807)
- The Valpinçon Bather (1808)
- La Dormeuse de Naples (1809)
- Grande Odalisque (1814)
- The Source (c 1820)
- Odalisque with Slave (1842)
- Venus Anadyomene (1848)
- The Turkish Bath (1863)
- Bonaparte, First Consul (1804)
- Portrait of Philibert Rivière (1805)
- Portrait of Marie-Françoise Rivière (1805–06)
- Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière (1806)
- Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne (1806)
- La Belle Zélie (1806)
- Portrait of Madame Duvaucey (1807)
- Portrait of Charles Marcotte (1810)
- Portrait of Paul Lemoyne (1811)
- Portrait of Madame de Senonnes (1814)
- Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1814)
- Portrait of Madame Jacques-Louis Leblanc (1823)
- Portrait of Madame Marcotte de Sainte-Marie (1826)
- Portrait of Amédée de Pastoret (1826)
- Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832)
- Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry (1842)
- Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville (1845)
- Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild (1848)
- Portrait of Madame Moitessier (1844–1856)
- The Princesse de Broglie (1851–1853)
- Portrait of Madame Ingres (1859)
- Self-Portrait Aged 24 (1806)
- Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight (1858)
- Antwerp Self-Portrait (1864-1865)