Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight (Ingres)

In 1839 the director of the Uffizi, Antonio Ramirez di Montalvo, sent Ingres a letter requesting the donation of a painting of himself for the museum's gallery of self-portraits of great artists.

Ingres demurred, believing that his obligations as director of the French Academy in Rome—and the work he was just beginning on Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry—would leave him no time to undertake the self-portrait.

[1] In 1855 Montalvo's successor, Marchese Luca Bourbon del Monte, renewed the request; this time Ingres felt able to oblige.

His letter reads in part: I beg you, Monsieur le Directeur, to accept all my excuses and regret for not complying sooner to the request that you so kindly addressed to me.

He is slimmer in the painting than he was in real life at the time, and wears an evening dress uniform that reflects his status as grand officer in Napoleon's Legion of Honour.

[4] Although Ingres appears aged and troubled, the portrait contains hints of optimism; he had been widowed but had recovered and was happily married to his second wife Dominique Rame, and could look back on a commercially successful if not artistically fulfilling career.

[3] His expression is often interpreted by modern art historians as conflicted, troubled and bad tempered, the reflection of a frustrated history painter at the end of a career spent largely on society painting.