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Looking at Madame Moitessier and her double, one can see why Ingres had such an obsessional hold on Picasso. All the dropsical women of his so-called classic period, the early 1920s, are peasant cousins of this goddess of the salon, and the rhythmic curves of Ingres's drawing would continue to serve Picasso as emblems of peace and sexual satisfaction.
How would Ingres have liked this show, the first ever dedicated to his portraits? Impossible to guess. He might have objected to seeing what he considered the lesser part of his work isolated from the greater part, the paintings of history and myth. A modern viewer couldn't care less, and shouldn't. For with the passage of time, Ingres's portraits have become history paintings in their own right.