Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière

The portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière was painted in 1806 by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and today hangs in the Louvre. It is the third of three portraits of the Rivière family that the artist painted that year. Caroline's father, Philibert Rivière, was a successful court official under Napoleon's empire and sought to commemorate himself, his wife and daughter through a commission with the then young and rising artist—Ingres's portraits of Philibert and his wife are also still extant. Although Ingres favoured subject matter drawn from history or Greek legend, at this early stage in his career, he earned his living mainly through commissions from wealthy patrons. The family lived outside Paris at St. Germain-en-Laye, and Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière would have been between 13 and 15 at the time she was portrayed; Ingres described her as the "ravishing daughter".