The Virgin Adoring the Host
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
The Virgin stands behind the altar, and it is not her Son in her arms she adores but the Host before her, the Real Presence, worshipped even by the woman who bore him. Ingres first painted the subject with the Child asleep, and in the 1841 version substituted the Eucharist in his place. Two saints flank her, unnamed.
Ingres painted it in Paris in 1852, not on commission but as a gift to Louise Marcotte, the friend who had introduced him to Delphine Ramel, the woman he married that same year. It follows Raphael's private Madonnas, not any church's altarpiece.
Sources: Composition (Virgin behind altar, flanked by two saints, adoring the Host) and homage to Raphael's early-1500s intimate devotional painting tradition · Gary Tinterow, catalogue entry, Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800-1920 (Met, 2007), via pubhist.com · David J. Conrad, 'The Virgin Adoring the Host', St Aidan Parish, Livonia. · Sotheby's, 19th Century European Art, sale N09143 (2014), lot 69, 'The Virgin with the Sleeping Infant Jesus', catalogue note.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 6,060 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.