Charles Nicolas Cochin

Watermark: none.
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 1784-85 edition of Torquato Tasso's "La Gerusalemme Liberata" published in Paris by François Ambroise Didot. These illustrations were commissioned by Monsieur, the Comte de Provence and the brother of Louis XVI who later reigned as Louis XVIII (1755-1824). The eighteen drawings were part of an album of 102 drawings broken up and sold in several lots by Sotheby's, London, in 1970.
This drawing, which is smaller in size than the other Morgan sketch for a frontispiece (Acc. No. 1989.41:1), has not been connected with any known finished design. As in the larger sketch, the figure of Generosity occupies the center of the composition. With her left hand, she places the royal insignia on a column. She is flanked by two figures on each side. Ar left are two female figures, with the far left figure perhaps representing Chastity. She is completely covered by drapery, and holds a wreath in her raised left hand. She stands alongside another female figure also preparing to crown Generosity with a wreath. To the right, the poet Tasso and a soldier wearing a helmet and armor offer their gift of laurel to Generosity. They step on a prostrate female figure, perhaps the seductress Armida, personifying evil. The Muse of Epic Poetry hovers above. These title pages, like many others in Cochin's oeuvre, exemplify the artist;s love of elaborate allegorical schemes.