Art/Oil Painting/Neo-Classical Master's Raphael and Forna Rena

Raphael and Forna Rena Harvard University Museum of Art, Cambridge 1814 64.8cm× 53.3cm oil on canvas

The work was created after Ingres returned from a study tour in Rome, when he was eager to put on canvas everything he saw and learned in Rome, especially the study of the ancient masters, whom Raphael admired the most. He not only made in-depth exploration and copying of Raphael's works and painting techniques, but also had a great interest in his life and emotional life outside of painting. Ingres originally planned to create a series of works from some fragments of Raphael's daily life, but in the end only drew "Raphael's Engagement Ceremony with cardinal Bibina's Niece" and some other works on this subject, from which it is not difficult to see that Ingres's romantic fantasies about the life of ancient artists tended to be more mysterious and speculative legendic topics than to depict the historical facts recorded in the canonical history.

On this subject, Ingres created a total of 5 versions of the work, in addition to this one, there are another 4 paintings, two works in private collections, can not be seen at a glance; 1 was destroyed in 1941; 1 was collected in the Columbus Museum.