Although Ingres was an artistic rebel in his youth, he became the chief representative of traditional French painting and the methods of the Neoclassical movement. Ingres practiced the system taught by France's national school of art-working from a preliminary sketch for the entire design, through studies of specific details, to the finished canvas.

This image consists of six studies for Jesus among the Doctors, which Ingres cut from preparatory works and reassembled. They show his skilled drawing, careful execution, and adept use of light and shadow to model form-all hallmarks of academic painting.

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