Madame Armand Bertin, née Marie-Anne-Cécile Dollfuss

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ingres’s characteristic distortion of anatomy is apparent in this drawing, as the impossibly long arms and extreme downward slope of Madame Bertin’s shoulders defy proportion. Her face—framed by glossy, sausage-shaped ringlets—bears a soft, friendly expression, testifying to the Bertin family’s close relationship with the artist. The portrait forms a pair with that of her husband (2012.150.13), to whom Ingres dedicated this sensitive likeness.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art