Madeleine: After a series of sentimental disappointments, Ingres began a correspondence with Madeleine Chapelle, a milliner from Guéret. She was a cousin of the wife of the chief registrar of the Imperial Court in Rome, whom the painter had been courting in vain. Madeleine came to join him in Rome a few months after they started exchanging letters. Their relationship remained warm and strong throughout thirty-six years despite the death of their single child, a stillborn baby. Ingres painted several portraits of his wife, which all reflect the constant admiration he felt for her, and the manifest purity of his love. (Madeleine (Three-Quarter Profile), Madeleine Ingres and the Painter)