Essay Analysis: La Princesse De Broglie

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Yuchen Cui
AR360 ART HISTORY Prof. Winkler
23 April 2018
Analysis: La Princesse de Broglie by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
La Princesse de Broglie (English name: Princesse de Broglie) is a 47 3/4 x 35 3/4 inch
(121.3 x 90.8 cm) oil on canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres. It was completed between 1851 and 1853 and shows Joséphine-Éléonore- Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, known as Pauline, wife of Albert de Broglie, the 28th Prime Minister of France. The marvelous painting is covered by an overall, 157 x 125.6 cm; sight, 109.5 x 89 cm; rebate, 123 x 92.5 cm Louis XIII style Ovolo frame which made by pine, plaster ornament, gilt and pink-orange bole.
Princesse de Broglie is currently hanging in the Robert Lehman Collection (Gallery 957) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) of New York city. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the neo-classical French artist par excellence, painted this masterpiece toward the end of his life when his reputation as a portraitist to prominent citizens and Orléanist aristocrats had been long established. Pauline de Broglie sat for …show more content…

This “still life” of luxuriant materials enabled the artist to expand his repertoire – adding cashmere, silk thread, velvet, leather, and ivory to the portrait’s inventory of textures and textiles. The portrait’s material detail amply describes a social milieu. But for all the finery that accessorized the princess, we have very little understanding of the woman herself. Framing her bodice and head in the spare rectangle of the wall’s moldings, the artist preserves her privacy, idealizing her facial expression. She is, in the end, inscrutable. It is only because history reminds us of her extreme reserve that we read the portrait as we do, inferring a shy demeanor. Pauline exists as the object of her painter’s

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