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.
The parish register of the parish of Saint-Benoit, Paris, shows that Louise-Magdeleine, baptized in 1686, was one of at least six children of Daniel Horthemels, a bookseller, and his wife Marie Cellier. [1] The Horthemels family had come from The Netherlands. Originally Protestants, they became followers of the Dutch Roman Catholic theologian Cornelis Jansen and had links with the Parisian abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, the centre of Jansenist thought in France. [1]
Active as a copperplate engraver by 1707, on 10 August 1713 Horthemels married another engraver, Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder. [1] There were several more engravers in their extended family, including Cochin's brother Frédéric and the two sisters of Horthemels, Marie-Anne-Hyacinthe (1682–1727), [1] who was the wife of Nicolas-Henri Tardieu (1674–1749), an eminent engraver, a member of the Academy from 1720, [2] and Marie-Nicole (b. 1689, died after 1745), [1] who was married to the portrait artist Alexis Simon Belle. [3]
Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels' son Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger became an engraver to the court of King Louis XV, a designer, writer, and art critic. [4]
Horthemels died in Paris at her son's house on 2 October 1767.
Horthemels was active in Paris as an engraver for nearly fifty years and produced more than sixty signed copper plates. [1]
Her first published work was a frontispiece for Alain-René Lesage's novel Le Diable boiteux (1707), which she signed Magdeleine Horthemels fec. [1] Her later work is signed variously Magd. Horthemels, L. Mag. Horthemels, M. Horthemels, Magd. Horthemels Sponsa C. Cochin, and Magdeleine Cochin. [1]
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. [1]
Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels engraved paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Coypel, Michel Corneille the Younger, Claude Vignon, and Nicolas Lancret, [5] 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. [1] She designed a series of twenty-three plates depicting the nuns of the abbey of Port-Royal and their everyday life. [1] 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. [6]
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. [1] 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. [7]
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. [1]
Port-Royal-des-Champs was an abbey of Cistercian nuns in Magny-les-Hameaux, in the Vallée de Chevreuse southwest of Paris that launched a number of culturally important institutions.
Antoine Anselme, born in L'Isle-Jourdain in Armagnac on 13 January 1652 and died in his abbey of Saint-Sever on 8 August 1737, was a widely noted French preacher.
François de Troy was a French painter and engraver who became principal painter to King James II in exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Director of the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture.
Events from the year 1767 in art.
Events from the year 1686 in art.
Alexis Simon Belle was a French portrait painter, known for his portraits of the French and Jacobite nobility. As a portrait artist, Belle's style followed that of his master François de Troy, Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Nicolas de Largillière. He was the master of the painter Jacques-André-Joseph-Camelot Aved (1702–1766).
Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart, known to Jacobites as The Princess Royal, was the last child of James II and VII, the deposed king of England, Scotland and Ireland, by his second wife Mary of Modena. Like her brother James Francis Edward Stuart, Louisa Maria was a Roman Catholic, which, under the Act of Settlement 1701, debarred them both from succession to the British throne after the death of their Protestant half-sister Anne, Queen of Great Britain.
Charles-Nicolas Cochin was a French engraver, designer, writer, and art critic. To distinguish him from his father of the same name, he is variously called Charles-Nicolas Cochin le Jeune, Charles-Nicolas Cochin le fils, or Charles-Nicolas Cochin II.
Madeleine Boullogne was a French Baroque still life painter.
Johann Georg Wille, or Jean Georges Wille was a German-born copper engraver, who spent most of his life in France. He also worked as an art dealer.
Auguste Gaspard Louis, Baron Boucher-Desnoyers, was one of the most eminent of modern French engravers.
Charles Nicolas Cochin the Elder was a French line-engraver.
Nicolas-Henri Tardieu, called the "Tardieu the elder", was a prominent French engraver, known for his sensitive reproductions of Antoine Watteau's paintings. He was appointed graveur du roi to King Louis XV of France. His second wife, Marie-Anne Horthemels, came from a family that included engravers and painters. She is known as an engraver in her own right. Nicolas-Henri and Marie-Anne Tardieu had many descendants who were noted artists, most of them engravers.
Jacques-Nicolas Tardieu, called "Tardieu fils" or "Tardieu the younger", was a French engraver.
Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier was a French engraver of coins and medals.
Marie-Anne-Hyacinthe Horthemels was a French engraver, wife of the King's engraver Nicolas-Henri Tardieu.
Events from the year 1767 in France
Gilles Demarteau or Gilles Demarteau the Elder was an etcher, engraver and publisher who was active in Paris for his entire career. He is one of the persons to whom has been attributed the invention of the crayon manner of engraving. He is recognized as playing an important role in the development of this engraving technique. He was one of the key reproductive engravers and publishers of the work of François Boucher.
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