Louis Stanislas, comte de Provence, a younger brother of Louis XVI’s who later reigned as Louis XVIII, commissioned Cochin to illustrate a printed edition of the sixteenth-century epic Jerusalem Delivered by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Cochin produced forty-one full-page drawings and forty-one smaller head-and tailpiece illustrations, each of which earned him the considerable sum of five hundred francs. The superimposed grid on each sketch was to help enlarge and transfer the composition to a copper engraving plate. Cochin also produced more finished versions of each composition—likely to aid the engravers with details and shading—that were then gifted to Stanislas.
Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1715–1790)
Preparatory sketch for Ubaldo Driving Away the Wild Beasts with His Wand, ca. 1783–85
Black chalk on gray paper; squared in black chalk for transfer
Purchase; 1989.41:13
Preparatory sketch for Armida Departing, Leaving Behind the Crusaders as Her Prisoners, ca. 1783–85
Black chalk on gray paper; squared in black chalk for transfer
Purchase; 1989.41:5