Page 165 - Pierre Durand Collection Including Chinese Art and Porcelain Sothebys Jan 27 2022

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CHARLES-ANTOINE COYPEL (PARIS 1694-1752) The tapestry was part of a set illustrating two episodes from operas by
Jean-Baptiste Lully and Philippe Quinault, inspired by Torquato Tasso’s
Armida on a dragon
Gerusalemme liberata. The sorceress Armida, daughter to the king of
black and red chalk Damas, is sent to kill the Christian knight Rinaldo, with whom she ends up
12 x 14Ω in. (30.3 x 36.8 cm)
falling in love. Armida bewitches Rinaldo and locks him in a garden, but
$7,000-10,000 eventually realizes that he only loved her under duress. In a fit of rage and
chagrin, Armida, riding a dragon, destroys the palace that she had created
PROVENANCE: for her and her lover. A wiven version of the composition, produced by
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 9 January 1996, lot 185.
Mathieu Monmerqué between 1738 and 1740 at the Gobelins, is today in
the collection of the Rijksmuseum (inv. BK-1955-102-B; see J. Vittet, Les
This work is a preparatory study for a tapestry representing the Destruction Gobelins au Siècle des Lumières. Un Âge d’or de la manufacture royale, exhib.
of the Palace of Armida after a design by Charles-Antoine Coypel from cat., Paris, Galerie des Gobelins, 2014, no. 90, ill.). Another drawing for the
1737, for which the cartoon is preserved in the collection of the Musée des same tapestry is in a private collection (L.-A. Prat, Le Dessin français au
Beaux-Arts de Nancy (inv. 532; see T. Lefrançois, Charles Coypel, peintre XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2017, p. 193, fig. 323).
du Roi (1694-1752), Paris, 1994, no. P.187, ill.). A smaller modello was sold at
Christie’s, London, 8 December 2015, lot 36 (ibid., no. P.186, ill.). The tapestry
was woven at the Manufacture des Gobelins as decoration of the apartments
of Queen Marie Leszczyńska at Versailles.

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