Cardinal Bernardo had a niece, Maria Bibbiena, who wanted to marry Raphael. The artist felt that he could not refuse, being placed in a difficult position due to the cardinal’s enormous influence. Yet it presented him with a problem – because Raphael was already secretly in love with the daughter of a baker, Margherita Luti, a woman often referred to as La Fornarina (the (female) Baker). He accepted the role as Maria Bibbiena’s fiance, but continually postponed the marriage, so that it had still not taken place when he died.

In Ingres’ final version, Margherita sits upon Raphael’s lap. Her pose and her turban clearly allude to the "Madonna della seggiola", which can be seen in the background. On the easel, barely begun, is Raphael’s painting, La Fornarina. In a manner suggestive of the myth of Pygmalion, the artist seems torn between Art and “reality”.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867

was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

Ingres was profoundly informed by past artistic traditions, and in his career assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style, exemplified by Eugène Delacroix. His expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art, whose work influenced Picasso and Matisse and other modernists.

Born into a modest family in Montauban, he travelled to Paris to study in the studio of David. In 1802 he made his Salon debut, and won the Prix de Rome for his painting The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. By the time he departed in 1806 for his residency in Rome, his style — revealing his close study of Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters was fully developed, and would change little for the rest of his life.

While working in Rome and subsequently Florence from 1806 to 1824, he regularly sent paintings to the Paris Salon, where they were faulted by critics who found his style bizarre and archaic. He received few commissions during this period for the history paintings he aspired to paint, but was able to support himself and his wife as a portrait painter and draughtsman.

He finally achieved a great Salon success in 1824 with his Raphaelesque painting of the Vow of Louis XIII, and became recognized as the leader of the Neoclassical school in France. Although commissions for history paintings freed him to paint fewer portraits, it was his portrait of Louis-François Bertin that gave him his next popular success in 1833.