Raphael and the Baker’s Daughter

A semi-scandalous love affair from the sixteenth century.

“Raphael and the Baker’s Daughter” is an oil on canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, from 1846. Ingres painted this when he was working as the director of the Academy of France located in Rome, Italy at 66 years old.

Ingres first set out to be a history painter. He was opposed to the Romanticism art movement that was popular at the time. Instead, Ingres sought to promote the more academic style of Neoclassicism.

One of Ingres’s main artistic inspirations throughout his career was the Renaissance artist, Raphael. So much so that Ingres modeled his artistic style after him. In his work, Ingres was a purist. He wanted smooth, clean lines and overall form with rich colors, such as those found in the works of Raphael.

In this piece, Ingres depicts Raphael with his mistress, Margarita Luti, who was the local baker’s daughter. Ingres depicts Raphael looking over at a new sketch he had just made of his model and muse. This sketch would turn into one of his more well-known pieces, “La Fornarina”. Raphael painted several portraits of his mistress and used her as a model for many of his works. Meanwhile, a large-scale religious painting of the Transfiguration remains unfinished and somewhat forgotten against the back wall. This painting was actually never finished by the art master.

Raphael died young, at just 37 years old. Rumor was that he caught an illness after an ‘excessive night’ with his love interest. This put him into a fever which he suffered for 15 days before his death. Modern day theories of his death abound, including syphilis or being overly bled.

“Raphael and the Baker’s Daughter” is currently on display at the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States.

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