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Ingres's Reading – The Undoing of Narrative
Author(s) -
Siegfried Susan L.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00238
Subject(s) - undoing , narrative , reading (process) , painting , art , literature , relation (database) , composition (language) , key (lock) , art history , close reading , philosophy , linguistics , psychology , psychoanalysis , computer science , computer security , database
Ingres's reading of key classical texts, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516), Dante's Inferno (1314), and Virgil's Aeneid (19 BC), is regarded as fundamental to understanding his material attempts to visualize his narrative subjects. The essay focuses on three paintings, which represent quite different forms of narrative disunity in his work: Roger Freeing Angelica (disjunction), Paolo and Francesca (excessive unity), and Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus , Octavia and Livia , or Tu Marcellus Eris (a coming apart of classical composition). His paintings' affective relation to the viewer is considered with regard to the sadism of their themes and their fetishized treatment of surfaces.