Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Study for Pindar in 'The Apotheosis of Homer'

In this study for the ancient Greek poet Pindar, Ingres tries out alternative ideas for the figure’s hands, proffering a lyre towards Homer. Leaving these different attempts visible allows comparisons to be made between them. Ingres could have erased these lines (his preferred method was to scrape the surface of the paper); that he didn’t suggests he considered them viable alternatives, rather than corrections. The hand and arm strengthened in black chalk were those he chose for the final painting. The drawing is squared ready for transfer at any scale to another surface for further development. Another drawing by Ingres in the British Museum collection [1975,0301.50] focuses solely on Pindar’s drapery demonstrating the standard academic practice of drawing first a nude, then a clothed figure. Along with twenty other studies for 'The Apotheosis of Homer' (1827, Paris, Musée du Louvre), it was bought by Edgar Degas, who referred to the drawings of Ingres as ‘those marvels of the human spirit’. [Edgar Degas, letter to Bartholomé, undated, c. 1888, 'Lettres de Degas', no. 101 (Paris: Grasset: 1945), p. 127, cited in Ann Dumas et al., 'The Private Collection of Edgar Degas', trans. Mark Polizzotti, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), p. 26.]