Focus on The Princesse de Broglie and explore the abstract.
The Princesse de Broglie (French: La Princesse de Broglie [la pʁɛ̃.sɛs də bʁɔj]) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It was painted between 1851 and 1853, and shows Pauline de Broglie, who adopted the courtesy title 'Princesse'. Born Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, she married Albert de Broglie, the future 28th Prime Minister of France, in 1845. Pauline was 28 at the time of the painting's completion. She was highly intelligent and widely known for her beauty, but she suffered from profound shyness and the painting captures her melancholia. Pauline contracted tuberculosis in her early 30s and died in 1860 aged 35. Although Albert lived until 1901, he was heartbroken and did not remarry.
Ingres undertook a number of preparatory pencil sketches for the commission, each of which captures her personality and taste. They show her in various poses, including standing, and in differently styled dresses. The final painting is considered one of Ingres's finest later-period portraits of women, along with the Portraits of Comtesse d'Haussonville, Baronne de Rothschild and Madame Moitessier. As with many of Ingres's portraits of women, details of the costume and setting are rendered with precision while the body seems to lack a solid bone structure. The painting is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and is signed and dated 1853.
tuberculosis Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres courtesy title de Broglie Neoclassical melancholia Albert de Broglie Madame Moitessier fr Comtesse d'Haussonville Prime Minister of France Metropolitan Museum of Art Baronne de Rothschild