Works of Art
More than fifteen hundred works by Cochin can be identified. They include historical subjects, book illustrations, and portraits in pencil and crayon. The richest collection of his engravings, apparently selected by himself, is in the Royal Library, now part of the Bibliothèque National.
Cochin's own compositions are usually rich, gracious, and speak of a man full of erudition.
A notable piece of work is his frontispiece to the 1764 edition of Diderot's Encyclopédie, entitled Lycurgue blessé dans une sédition. Of his historical work, the best known prints include The death of Hippolytus, after François de Troy, and David playing the harp before Saul. As well as his many drawings, he illustrated more than two hundred books and also designed paintings and sculptures.
With Philippe Lebas, an early master of Cochin's, he engraved sixteen plates in the series Ports of France, of which fifteen are after paintings by Vernet and one designed by himself.
More than three hundred of his portraits are listed by Christian Michel in his monumental Charles-Nicolas Cochin et l'art des Lumières (1993).
Read more about this topic: Charles-Nicolas Cochin
Famous quotes containing the words works of art, works of, works and/or art:
“Most works of art are effectively treated as commodities and most artists, even when they justly claim quite other intentions, are effectively treated as a category of independent craftsmen or skilled workers producing a certain kind of marginal commodity.”
—Raymond Williams (1921–1988)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar—that I call an achievement.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)