Watermark: J. Kool (part of Churchill 191 or 197).
This sheet belongs to an ensemble of eighteen preparatory sketches (seven for vignettes and eleven for headpieces) for illustrations and two prints after Cochin for an edition of Torquato Tasso's "La Gerusalemme Liberata" published by François Ambroise Didot in Paris in 1784-1786. These illustrations were commissioned by Monsieur, the Comte de Provence and the brother of Louis XVI who later reigned as Louis XVIII (1755-1824). These eighteen drawings were part of an album of 102 drawings sold by Sotheby's in London in 1970. The two drawings missing from the group of twenty in the Sotheby's sale of 1970, are now at the Yvonne Tan Bunzl Gallery in London and in a New York private collection. The present sheet is the preparatory drawing for the vignette to Canto IX, Ott. 8 of "La Gerusalemme Liberata". The corresponding finished drawing for this vignette is in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library and is signed and dated by the artist. The print, in the opposite direction, was executed by J.B. Tilliard, engraver and publisher (c. 1740-1813), and precedes p. 275 of Volume I of the second edition of 1785-1786, a copy of which is in the Gordon Ray Collection (formerly Roederer Collection) at the Morgan Library.