Works on Paper 2019 - Jean Luc Baroni

Charles Nicolas Cochin
Paris 1715 – 1790
19
Sculpture, Painting and Engraving Mourning the Death of the Marquis de Marigny et de Ménars
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, grey wash
Signed C.N. Cochin fecit at lower left
122 x 76 mm (4 ¾ x 3 in.)
This lovely drawing executed in a refined technique
can be connected with the engraved frontispiece
after Cochin’s drawing for the catalogue of the sale
of the cabinet of the marquis de Ménars – Abel
Poisson de Vandières, marquis of Marigny and
of Ménars – which was held on 18 March 1782
(Fig. 1). 1 “Weeping arts honoured his memory, and
his love for them will live in their history” reads
the inscription on the print, which Bachaumont
finds “most kind and tasteful”. 2 In fact we can see
Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, all three stricken
with grief, around the marquis’s coat of arms:
two fishes facing away from each other. They are
placed at the foot of an obelisk decorated with a
medallion with his effigy. Cochin’s print represents
a veritable tribute paid by the arts to the marquis
de Marigny bears witness to the long and fruitful
relationship between the two men.
Coming from several artistic families, particularly
engravers, Cochin had made his way in the world
relying on various connections his family could
find for him. In 1739 he was appointed to the
Menus-Plaisirs; in 1741, he was elected a member
Fig 1. B.L. Prevost, Frontispiece for the sale of the collection
of the marquis de Ménars, engraving, 1782.
agréé of the French Royal Academy. From 1746 he
frequented the salon of Madame Geoffrin which
gathered the leading figures of the art world and
it was on Cochin that the Marquise de Pompadour
called to educate the taste of her brother, Abel
Poisson de Vandières, future marquis de Marigny.
The two men were sent to study in Italy in
December 1749, in the company of the architect
Jacques-Germain Soufflot and by the art critic and
historian abbé Leblanc. At the death of the director
of the king’s buildings, Lenormant de Tournehem,
Marigny was recalled back to France to assume the
vacant post, which he held until his resignation
in 1773. He performed this function with great
intelligence, encouraging important projects
and developing relationship of trust and esteem
with artists. As for Cochin, he was awarded full
membership of the Academy upon his return and
appointed as curator of the king’s drawings. From
1755 to 1770, he was royal administrator of the fine
arts under the direction of Marigny. Cochin was also
an excellent and prolific portraitist sought after by
the best Parisian society, especially at the Monday
dinners of Madame Geoffrin where, as reported by
the guard of the royal print cabinet, Hugues-Adrien
Joly, “while some are engaged in conversation, S.
Cochin amuses himself by drawing either his fellow
artists or art amateurs, as if his intention would be
to have them all engraved in order to make a series
of portraits.” 3 Cochin executed about a hundred
portraits. The early ones were exhibited at the
1753 Salon. Systematically drawn in black chalk,
they show the models in profile and set within a
medallion format. The portrait on the obelisk in the
present drawing is the exact effigy of the marquis
de Marigny which Cochin executed in this context
in 1757 ( Paris, Musée Carnavalet). It is difficult
to say whether this drawing is a detailed project
preparing an engraving or an autograph repetition
that the artist made for an amateur. Be that as it
may, the present sheet is a work of great refinement
both due to its sophisticated graphic technique and
to the admirable balance of the composition.
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