Charles Nicolas Cochin

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1715-1790

Rinaldo Realizes His Effeminate State, Seeing His Image Mirrored in the Shield Held by Two Warriors

Black chalk on gray paper, partly gone over with pen and black ink; squared in black chalk for transfer.

Full sheet: 4 1/4 x 6 inches (108 x 152 mm); design area: 2 9/16 x 5 1/8 inches (65 x 130 mm)

Purchase.

1989.41:14

Inscription:

Inscribed above design in pen and brown ink by the artist, "Canto XVI, ott. 29 / ott/ 30"; in black chalk, "de droitte a gauche". Collector's mark of the Comte Nicholas A. Koucheleff-Bezborodko stamped in blue at lower right corner (Lugt 1629).

Provenance:

Comte Nicolas A. Koucheleff-Bezborodko, St. Petersburg (Lugt 1629); Comte J.P. van Suchtelen, general and Russian diplomat (Lugt 2332; his mark only on the first page of the album of 102 drawings sold at Sotheby's in 1970); his sale, Paris, 4 June 1862; Cambray and Portalis Collections; Eugène von Wasserman, Brussels; his sale, Brussels, Galerie Georges Giroux, 24-27 October and 3-5 November 1921, pp. 153-4, no. 954; General Jacques Willems, Brussels; his sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 April 1970, lots 143 and 144; H. Shickman Gallery; Adolphe Stein, Paris; Christian Humann; his sale, New York, Sotheby's, 21 January 1983, no. 75 (nine drawings and two prints); Spencer A. Samuels & Company, Ltd., New York.

Notes:

Watermark: fragmentary.
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 headpiece to Canto XVI, Ott. 29.30 of "La Gerusalemme Liberata". The corresponding finished drawing is in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, and is signed and dated by the artist.

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Cochin, Charles Nicolas

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