Boucher composed this sweeping allegorical frame as one of the frontispieces in Owen MacSwiny’s Tombs of Princes, Great Captains, and Other Illustrious Men, a volume of engravings featuring allegorical tombs of notable Englishmen. This composition introduced the tomb of Sidney Godolphin (1645–1712), a British politician instrumental in negotiating the Acts of Union in 1707, which established Great Britain as a political entity. Boucher’s frame was ultimately engraved by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger for the print publication.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a portrait painter who was also well known for his ability to render animals. This is likely why he was inspired in 1729–34 to compose 277 drawings based on the animal fables of Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695). Oudry made these compositions for his own artistic practice and enjoyment. Upon his death, however, the suite of drawings was acquired by the writer and editor Louis Regnard de Montenault (act. 1750–60), who used them to illustrate a monumental new printed edition of the Fables (in the center of the room). Montenault employed Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger to rework the drawings so that they could be more effectively converted into engravings.

La Fontaine’s Fables is one of the most ambitious, monumental book productions to emerge from eighteenth-century Paris. A celebration of French literature, engraving, and typography, it was not so much a book to read as one to collect for its artistic value. The Monkey and the Cat illustration was engraved by Louis Legrand (1723–1807) based upon the original Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Charles-Nicolas Cochin drawing (on the wall to your left). The composition, reversed through the engraving process, has a more detailed setting and intense play of light and shadow than the original, although the focus on the lively animals is diminished.

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.