The Source (French: La Source) is an oil painting on canvas by French neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The work was begun in Florence around 1820 and not completed until 1856, in Paris.[2] When Ingres completed The Source, he was seventy-six years old,[3] already famous,[4] and president of the École des Beaux-Arts.[5] The pose of the nude may be compared with that of another by Ingres, the Venus Anadyomene (1848),[6] and is a reimagination of the Aphrodite of Cnidus or Venus Pudica.[5] Two of Ingres' students, painters Paul Baize and Alexandre Desgoffe, helped to create the background and water jar.[1]