Clara Lespessailles

A doctoral student in art history at the EPHE and the École du Louvre since 2021, she is devoting her research to a thesis entitled: Les primitivismes chez les élèves d’Ingres entre 1830 et 1860. Italian artistic and affective histories; project supported by the Fondation Étrillard grant. Since September 2024, she has been a fellow at the German Center for Art History in Paris as part of the biannual Nature program. At the same time, alongside Déborah Laks and Alice Thomine-Berrada, she is contributing to the “Archives audiovisuelles de la pédagogie artistique à l’École des Beaux-arts de Paris depuis 1960” project.

Her project aims to reconstitute an Italian cartography of primitivism among Ingres’s pupils between 1830 and 1840, including artistic sites, monuments, museums, itineraries, living and meeting places, fundamental questions for her thesis. This stay will enable her to immerse herself in the physical, visual and mental atmosphere of the Italian journey, and to understand a set of traditions rooted in this Ingresist circle, expressed through both artistic and relational practices. Direct confrontation between the works of the Primitives and their own works will encourage analysis of the students’ positioning games, archaisms and stylistic shifts.