It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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Plan du monastère de Port-Royal-des-Champs d’après une gravure de Magdeleine Hortemels
Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels, or Louise-Madeleine Hortemels, also called Magdeleine Horthemels (1686 – 2 October 1767), was a French engraver, the mother of Charles-Nicolas Cochin. She is also sometimes credited under her married name of Louise Madeleine Cochin or Madeleine Cochin.
Horthemels was active in Paris as an engraver for nearly fifty years and produced more than sixty signed copper plates.
Her first published work was a frontispiece for Alain-René Lesage’s novel Le Diable boiteux(fr) (1707), which she signed Magdeleine Horthemels fec. Her later work is signed variously Magd. Horthemels, L. Mag. Horthemels, M. Horthemels, Magd. Horthemels Sponsa C. Cochin, and Magdeleine Cochin.
It was long believed that Louise-Magdeleine and her sisters Marie-Nicole and Marie-Anne-Hyacinthe all signed work Marie Horthemels, but a careful study has shown that the signed work of the sisters can easily be distinguished. Nevertheless, the members of the family commonly worked together on a single composition.
Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels engraved paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Coypel, Michel Corneille the Younger, Claude Vignon, and Nicolas Lancret,and produced illustrations for a history of the Hôtel des Invalides and for a history of the Languedoc, in collaboration with her husband Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder. She designed a series of twenty-three plates depicting the nuns of the abbey of Port-Royal and their everyday life. The abolition of the abbey had been ordered by a bull of Pope Clement XI in September 1708, the remaining nuns were forcibly removed in 1709, and most of the buildings were razed to the ground in 1710, on the orders of the Conseil du Roi of King Louis XIV.
Horthemels completed a great plate called Le feu d’artifice de la place de Navone, after Giovanni Pannini, which had been begun by her son Charles Nicolas Cochin. She also engraved portraits, such as a copper engraving of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, after an early eighteenth century painting by her brother-in-law Alexis Simon Belle.
In the early work of Horthemels as an engraver, there is a certain rigidity of line, while architectural detail is emphasized. However, her skill lay in engraving the work of others so that their genius was revealed and her own style was suppressed. Her hand was sure, and her work shows a delicacy and clarity of touch which were much admired in her own time.
5. Gustave Doré (1832-1883)
Dante et Virgile dans le neuvième cercle de l’enfer, 1861
Huile sur toile - 315 x 450 cm
Bourg-en-Bresse, Musée du monastère royal de Brou
Photo : Musée du monastère royal de Brou
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Misia, 1897
Misia Sert (born Maria Zofia Olga Zenajda Godebska; St. Petersburg, 30 March 1872 – Paris, 15 October 1950) was a pianist of Polish descent who hosted an artistic salon in Paris. She was a patron and friend of numerous artists, for whom she regularly posed.
Her father, Cyprian Godebski (1835–1909), was a renowned Polish sculptor, and professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1870. Her mother, Zofia Servais, was the daughter of a noted Belgian cellist, Adrien-François Servais.
Chocolat danse dans le “Irish and American Bar”, 1896
Orphan, Rafal Padilla, born in Cuba in 1868, was sold to serve a rich Portuguese and brought to Europe. After escaping to Spain, he was discovered by the clown Tony Grice in Bilbao, who made him his partner. Padilla gained the nickname of ‘Chocolat’.
He then teamed up with the clown Footit in 1886, in Paris, where they became famous with their show, with Footit as an authoritarian clown who would correct Chocolat for his mistakes. It seems that the French expression “Je suis chocolat” (I’m chocolate”) meaning “I’m fooled” comes from his character.
His success was at its highest in 1905, when they produced at the Folies Bergères. But in 1910 the team split up, and Padilla didn’t manage to find a job as an actor, despite his qualities. He died in poverty in 1917.
