Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière

Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière is an 1806 oil on canvas portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, measuring 1 by 1.22 meters, depicting the teenage daughter of Philibert Rivière, a court official under Napoleon, whom Ingres described as his ravishing daughter. The painting sets its softly modeled figure against a hazy landscape background, an early instance of Ingres linking figure painting with landscape, and its stylization drew accusations of Gothic stiffness when it was shown at the Salon of 1806. Caroline Rivière died within a year of sitting for the portrait, a fact that has shaped how later audiences read the picture, and it now hangs in the Louvre in Paris as one of the peak achievements of Ingres's early career.