The Golden Age

This is a reduced version, with some variations, of one of two large mural paintings that Ingres completed for the Duc de Luynes’s castle in Dampierre between 1843 and 1847. Depicting the Golden Age, it refers to the mythical past described by ancient poets as the utopian existence humans first enjoyed after being created by the gods. Ingres outlined the iconography of his composition in a letter: “A heap of beautiful sloths! . . . The men of this generation knew nothing of old age. They lived for a long time and [were] always beautiful. . . . All this in a very varied nature, à la Raphael.” Ingres further invoked Raphael through some of the figures’ poses, in the arched shape of his picture, and by painting the mural on plaster, thereby inviting the comparison between his own work and Raphael’s famous frescoed murals in the papal apartments of the Vatican.