Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels, or Louise-Madeleine Hortemels, also called Magdeleine Horthemels (1686 - 2 October 1767), was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 engraver, the mother of Charles-Nicolas Cochin

Charles-Nicolas Cochin

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.-Early life:Cochin was born in Paris, the son of...

. She is also sometimes credited under her married name of Louise Madeleine Cochin or Madeleine Cochin.

Life

The parish register

Parish register

A parish register is a handwritten volume, normally kept in a parish church or deposited within a county record office or alternative archive repository, in which details of baptisms, marriages and burials are recorded.-History:...

 of the parish of Saint-Benoit, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, shows that Louise-Magdeleine, baptized in 1686, was one of at least six children of Daniel Horthemels, a bookseller, and his wife Marie Cellier. 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.

Active as a copperplate engraver by 1707, on 10 August 1713 Horthemels married another engraver, Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder

Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder

Charles Nicolas Cochin the Elder, a French line-engraver, was born in Paris in 1688. His father, Charles Cochin, was a painter, and Charles Nicolas followed the same profession until he was twenty-two years of age, when he abandoned painting and devoted himself entirely to engraving...

. 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), who was the wife of Nicolas-Henri Tardieu (1674–1749), an eminent engraver, a member of the Academy from 1720, and Marie-Nicole (b. 1689, died after 1745), who was married to the portrait artist Alexis Simon Belle

Alexis Simon Belle

Alexis Simon Belle was a French portrait painter, known for his portraits of the French and Jacobite nobility.-Birth:...

.

Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels' son Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger became an engraver to the court of King Louis XV

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

, a designer

Designer

A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...

, writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, and art critic

Art critic

An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

.

Horthemels died in Paris at her son's house on 2 October 1767.

Work

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

Book frontispiece

A frontispiece is a decorative illustration facing a book's title page. The frontispiece is the verso opposite the recto title page. Elaborate engraved frontispieces were in frequent use, especially in Bibles and in scholarly books, and many are masterpieces of engraving...

 for Alain-René Lesage

Alain-René Lesage

Alain-René Lesage was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks , his comedy Turcaret , and his picaresque novel Gil Blas .-Youth and education:Claude Lesage, the father of the novelist, held the united...

's novel (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

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

, Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...

, Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel

Antoine Coypel was a history painter, the more famous son of the French painter Noël Coypel.Antoine studied under his father, with whom he spent four years at Rome. At the age of eighteen he was admitted into the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, of which he became professor and rector in...

, Michel Corneille the Younger

Michel Corneille the Younger

Michel Corneille the Younger was a French painter, etcher and engraver, b. in Paris in 1642; d. at the Gobelins manufactory at Paris, 16 August 1708.-Life:...

, Claude Vignon

Claude Vignon

Claude Vignon was a leading French painter and engraver working in the Baroque manner.He was born at Tours and received early training in Paris...

, and Nicolas Lancret

Nicolas Lancret

Nicolas Lancret , French painter, was born in Paris, and became a brilliant depicter of light comedy which reflected the tastes and manners of French society under the regent Orleans....

, and produced illustrations for a history of the Hôtel des Invalides and for a history of the Languedoc

Languedoc

Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...

, 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

Papal bull

A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....

 of Pope Clement XI

Pope Clement XI

Pope Clement XI , born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was Pope from 1700 until his death in 1721.-Early life:...

 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

Conseil du Roi

The Conseil du Roi or King's Council is a general term for the administrative and governmental apparatus around the king of France during the Ancien Régime designed to prepare his decisions and give him advice...

 of King Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

.

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

James Francis Edward Stuart

James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales was the son of the deposed James II of England...

, after an early eighteenth century painting by her brother-in-law Alexis Simon Belle

Alexis Simon Belle

Alexis Simon Belle was a French portrait painter, known for his portraits of the French and Jacobite nobility.-Birth:...

.

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.

External links

• Louise Madeleine Cochin (née Horthemels) (1686-1767) at the web site of the National Portrait Gallery, London