Charles Damour

As one of Ingres' many pupils at the French Academy in Rome, Damour followed closely the master's practice, even using the same models. Damour's inscription identifies the model for this head study as Mastrillo, from Rome, whom he drew on 10 December 1836. An inscription on a drawing by Paul Flandrin from 1835 indicates that Mastrillo was routinely employed by the French pensionnaires at the Academy.
One of Damour's contemporaries, the artist Ernest Hébert, recalled the model in his memoirs of his student years spent at the Villa Medici in Rome. Hébert noted that as soon as he arrived for his first year in 1840, on the advice of his comrades, he enlisted as a model a longshoreman from the Tiber who also had posed for Ingres: "il se nommait Mastrillo et ressemblait plus à un gorille qu'à un homme." (Ernest Hébert, "La villa Médicis en 1840, Souvenirs d'un pensionnaire," 1901). The model's likeness appears in works from the 1830s and 40s, which feature his powerful physique and ample head of hair.