While serving as director of the French Academy in Rome, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres received a commission from the Russian czarevitch, the future Alexander II, for a devotional image of the Virgin and the Host, with two of the patron saints of Russia, Alexander Nevsky and Nicholas. Ingres as usual labored over the commission but was extremely proud of the finished result, which he exhibited in Paris in 1842 before sending it to Saint Petersburg (it is now at the State Pushkin Museum, Moscow). Regretting what he considered to be the loss of the picture to a foreign land, he made five variants of the rigorously Raphaelesque composition over the ensuing years. This immaculately preserved version is the first of all the sequels. He made it for his close friend Louise Marcotte, replacing the Russian saints with French ones, Louis and Helena, who must have had a special significance for Madame Marcotte.

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