Two lovers are locked in an embrace. The woman folds her swan like neck over her lover, the weight of her body rests atop his. And yet the man appears strangely distracted. He looks away from her, toward a framed painting to his left —a portrait he made of the same woman, still in its early stages. In Raphael and La Fornarina, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicts the artist he seeks to emulate the most —Raphael —with his muse, the Fornarina, on his lap. The master and the model become reduced to actors with rigid roles to play: the irresistible seductress and the powerlessly, although distractedly, seduced.

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