Madame Alexandre Lethière, née Rosa Meli, and Her Daughter, Letizia

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

1815 · Graphite on tracing paper glued down on support sheet · Drawings and Prints

This drawing is closely related to the Museum’s Madame Alexandre Lethière and Her Daughter Letizia by Ingres and is in fact a nearly identical tracing that the artist excised and pasted onto a new sheet of heavy white paper. A member of the Lethière family, who wanted a copy, may have requested the traced version. Rosa Meli, an Italian apothecary’s daughter, was the second wife of Alexandre Lethière, whose father, Guillaume, was director of the French Academy in Rome and a close friend of Ingres’s.

Artist

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Date

1815

Medium

Graphite on tracing paper glued down on support sheet

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2012