Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres has long been recognized as one of the great painters of the modern era and among the greatest portraitists of all time. Over a century and a half of scholarly writing on the artist has grappled with Ingres s singular identity, his relationship to past and future masters, and the idiosyncrasies of his art. Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History makes a unique contribution to this literature by focusing on the importance of Ingres s training of students and the crucial role played by portraits and their subjects for Ingres s studio and its developing aesthetic project. Rather than understanding the portrait as merely a screen onto which the artist s desires were projected, the book insists on the importance of accounting for the active role of portrait sitters themselves. Through careful analysis of familiar and long-overlooked works, Ingres and the Studio traces a series of encounters between painters and portrait subjects in which women sitters such as the artist Julie Mottez, art critic, salonniere, and historian Marie d Agoult, and tragic actress Rachel emerge as vital interlocutors in a shared aesthetic project."