Art-Princess de Broglie painted by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1851-53)

Although portraiture was a genre he increasingly came to dislike, Ingres depicted many of the leading personalities of his day. This splendid painting of Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassace de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie, is his last commissioned portrait of a female sitter. The princesse, a member of the most cultivated circles of the Second Empire, was renowned for her great beauty as well as her reserve, both qualities captured in this portrait. Ingres's facility for brilliantly transcribing the material quality of objects is seen in the rich satin and lace of the sitter's gown, the silk.