Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Born in Montauban in 1780, Ingres studied under David in Paris and won the Prix de Rome in 1802 for The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. His style - shaped by close study of Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters - was set by the time he left for Rome in 1806, and it barely shifted after. For eighteen years in Rome and Florence, he sent canvases back to the Paris Salon that critics called bizarre and archaic; commissions for the grand history paintings he wanted dried up, so he survived on portraits and drawings. Recognition finally came in 1824 when The Vow of Louis XIII won over the Salon, crowning him the leader of French Neoclassicism. A decade later, stung by attacks on The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian, he returned to Italy to direct the French Academy in Rome, then settled in Paris for good in 1841. He closed his career painting women's portraits, stained-glass designs, and at eighty-three finished The Turkish Bath, the last of his Orientalist nudes.