Venus Wounded by Diomedes

Throughout his life, Ingres worked on several essential themes. Known for his persistent effort to achieve perfection, he would return to already finished works. This drawing depicting a theme from Classical mythology is one such return. This is a later version of an homonymous painting from 1803. In this ideal composition, the artist rendered an episode from Iliad, showing the goddess Iris in a three−horse chariot as she drives the heart−broken Venus to Mount Olympus, while the Achaean hero Diomedes sits victoriously on a rock over an injured Trojan warrior and Venus’s son Aeneas. The composition derives from the style of Greek painted vases that the artist saw in Italy and knew from the illustration of Homer’s Iliad by John Flaxman. Ingres worked from live models in order to achieve the ideal concept in its purest form. Using contours, he created soft curving lines and a sense of plasticity; the light watercolours enlivened the figure of Venus, thus emphasizing the special sensuality and delicacy of the female body, like in his finest paintings of odalisques and female nudes.