Pompadour's Rodogune

Madame de Pompadour commissioned Boucher to illustrate the edition of Pierre Corneille’s play Rodogune, first published in 1647, that she was having printed at Versailles (on view in the case below). The frontispiece illustrates the climax of the play, when both Cleopatra, queen of Syria, and Rodogune, a Parthian princess, accuse each other of the murder of Seleucus. Boucher drew the scene from two vantages, which were later combined into a single composition. The original engraving, seen in the proof print to the right, was produced by Pompadour and then touched up for the final printing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger.