Charles Nicolas Cochin

Watermark: PRO PATRIA or Maid of Holland (cf. Churchill 127-153).
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. The present sheet is the preparatory drawing for the full-page illustration of Canto XVI, Ott. 59. The corresponding finished drawing is in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, and is signed and dated by the artist. The print, in the opposite direction, was executed by J. B. Tilliard, engraver and publisher (c. 1740-1813), and precedes p. 165 of Volume II of the second edition of 1785-1786 of "La Gerusalemme Liberata", a copy of which is in the Gordon Ray Collection at the Morgan Library.