Lo specchio magico di Ingres. Riflessioni sul tema della “alterità” psicologica in alcuni ritratti femminili del pittore di Montauban

Among the many portraits of women executed by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, there are some that are characterized by the presence of a mirror, large and enigmatic, placed immediately behind the figure: the Portrait of Madame de Senonnes, built in Rome between 1814 and 1816; the Portrait of Viscountess d'Haussonville, 1845, and finally the Portrait of Madame Moitessier, which began in 1844, but then abandoned and then resumed and completed in 1856. Defined by Emilio Radius «reflections of reflections», these portraits bring us not only the effigy and clothing extraordinary women depicted, countesses and ladies upper middle class, but also indirectly to the ideal of beauty that inspired uncorrupted artistic research the author. In a subtle play of references, they appear to us as a celebration of painting ''absolute'', which replaces the real, even before that faithful images of the characters represented. In this sense, the analysis of an apparently secondary like the mirror has always been conceived in Western painting as a symbol or a means to multiply the space, but also suggest prospects disturbing and mysterious, can lead us through a typical.