Why did critics call Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s early style Gothic?

Critics labeled Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s early style as "Gothic" primarily because of his use of stylistic archaisms that departed from the prevailing academic standards of his time.1

This pejorative label was specifically triggered by his 1806 portrait, Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne. Critics condemned the work for its "stiffness" and "flat frontality," which they perceived as being derived from medieval and Byzantine prototypes. Furthermore, his meticulous detailing and surface realism were seen as reminiscent of 15th-century Flemish masters rather than the expected Neoclassical tradition.1

By branding his approach as "Gothic," critics were essentially accusing Ingres of a "willfully primitivizing manner" and attempting to regress art to its infancy. This criticism reflected a broader resistance to his departure from conventional modeling and his use of anatomical distortions, which challenged the artistic norms of the early 19th-century Salon.21