"A visiting-card stuck into the frame of the mirror, with the inscription '_Ing. Roma_,' tells us that the picture was painted in the eternal city--apparently between 1806 and 1810. According to report, Ingres had a tender feeling for this fair Roman model, who, child of the people as she was, had lately become the wife of the Vicomte de Senonnes. And in truth, he has put into this portrait all the ardor, all the conviction, of his genius. "Madame de Senonnes died young; and the vicomte, returning from Italy to his home in Angers, married again, on which occasion he presented this portrait to his brother, who promptly relegated it to the attic. At the brother's death his heirs sold it for one hundred and twenty francs ($24.00) to a dealer who afterwards offered it to the Museum of Nantes, which unhesitatingly gave him the sum of four thousand francs ($800.00) for it. To-day it would bring, at the lowest estimate, one hundred thousand francs, and the time will undoubtedly come when it will be valued at a million." 'MONSIEUR LEBLANC' (DRAWING) PLATE III "Ingres' portraits in lead-pencil," writes M. Henry Lapauze, "are the most remarkable, if indeed they might not be called the greatest, productions of his genius.... In them we find unquestionably that quality of realism, over-conscientious, perhaps, but devoid of all coarseness, and that power of imparting life which in his large paintings is more or less concealed beneath the formality of his style." The drawing reproduced in plate III, and now in the Bonnat Collection at Bayonne, was made in Florence in 1822, as a preparatory study for a portrait in oil, executed in the following year. Drawn with a sureness of touch, a breadth, simplicity, and freedom, and at the same time a scrupulous precision, every line is significant. Monsieur Leblanc himself, dressed according to the fashion of the day in high silk hat and ample cloak, seems to stand before us in miniature. 'MADAME DESTOUCHE' (DRAWING) PLATE IV "The drawing in the Louvre of Madame Destouche," writes M. Momméja, "is perhaps the most beautiful, the most worthy of being placed first in the series of those incomparable portraits which Ingres' pencil has rendered as immortal on their frail sheets of paper as are those that have been cut into indestructible bronze by the Italian medalists. "Count Delaborde was, I believe, the first to remark upon this exquisite work. Writing of Ingres' drawings exhibited at the Salon des Arts-Unis in 1861, he says: 'The pencil portrait of Madame Destouche should especially be noticed--a drawing so masterly in its freedom, so fine in its picturesque quality, and in the originality of its costume.' And ten years later he wrote: 'This portrait is one of the most beautiful that Ingres ever drew.'