Charles-Antoine Coypel (Paris 1694-1752), The Destruction of the Palace of Armida. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd., 2012

signed and dated 'CH. COYPEL. 1737' (lower right); oil on canvas; 50 3/8 x 76 in. (128 x 193 cm.). Estimate £500,000 - £700,000 ($779,000 - $1,090,600)

Provenance: (Probably) Jean-Louis Tocqué (1696-1772), the portraitist, from 1750.
(Probably) Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), philosopher, historian, and member of the Académie Française, and by descent to the present owner.

Literature: J.-A. Piganiol de La Force, Extrait des différents ouvrages publiés sur la vie des peintres, Paris, 1776, II, p. 640.
E. Dilke, French painters of the XVIIIth Century, London, 1899, p. 153.
F. Ingersoll-Smouse, 'Charles-Antoine Coypel', La Revue de l'Art ancien et moderne, XXXVII, 1920, p. 286.
I. Jamieson, Charles-Antoine Coypel, premier peintre de Louis XV et auteur dramatique (1694-1752), sa vie et son oeuvre artistique et littéraire d'après des documents inédits, suivies d'une de ses comédies inédites, Paris, 1930, p. 51.
A. Schnapper, 'Musées de Lille et de Brest. A propos de deux nouvelles acquisitions. Le chef-d'oeuvre d'un muet ou la tentative de Charles Coypel', La Revue du Louvre, Paris, 1968, p. 256, nos. 4-5. Trésors des musées du nord de la France: La Peinture française aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, exhibition catalogue, Arras, 1980, p. 135.
T. Lefrancois, Charles Coypel, peintre du roi (1694-1752), Paris, 1994, pp. 186 and 302, with reference to a 1905 sale in Paris.
E. Bell, Charles-Antoine Coypel: Painting and Performance in Eighteenth-Century France, unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University, 2011, pp. 289-320.
E. Bell, Charles Coypel, (forthcoming). 

Notes: An almost hallucinatory fantasy of madness, vengeance and black magic, The Destruction of the Palace of Armida is a unique masterpiece of French narrative painting of the eighteenth century and the chef-d'oeuvre of Charles Coypel. Executed in 1737, it is associated with a suite of four designs by the artist that were commissioned by the French Crown between 1733 and 1741 for tapestries to decorate the private living quarters of Queen Marie Leszczynska at Versailles. This series, known as the Tenture des Fragments de l'Opéra, featured scenes from the théâtre lyrique of composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) and librettist Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), and was woven at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins (fig. 1). Executed on a vast scale, these complex compositions depicted episodes of high drama and -- literally -- operatic passions, something of a specialty of Charles Coypel, who was one of the most original and versatile artists of the ancien régime. The Destruction of the Palace of Armida would prove a virtuoso effort that occupies a singular place at the nexus of fine art, theatre, art theory and philosophy in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Charles Coypel (1694-1752) was the youngest member of a dynasty of history and genre painters that included his grandfather Noël Coypel (1628-1707), his father Antoine Coypel (1661-1722) and his half-uncle Noël-Nicolas Coypel (1690-1734), all of whom had successful official careers. He was recognized as a prodigy and was accepted into the Academy aged 21 with the submission of the vast history painting, Jason and Medea (1715; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg). Curious, highly intelligent and independently wealthy, Coypel was able to follow his interests where they led, and he pursued careers as a playwright and literary theorist as well as painter, although his plays were criticised and he eventually turned to writing exclusively for the private theatre, or 'théâtres de sociétés'. Nevertheless, his experience had a pronounced effect on his painting, in which he made great efforts to capture the wide range of emotions, gestures and expressions typical of the stage. This too opened him to attack -- the connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette wrote that Coypel 'was incapable of introducing either the unaffected or the natural into his art' -- but in many ways Coypel's theatricality developed out of a respect for costume, readable narrative and emphatic gesture which were the staples of French classicism, handed down from Nicolas Poussin and the generation of Charles Le Brun.

Charles Coypel was in several ways a perfect choice to design the Tentures des Fragments de l'Opéra, as he was an experienced actor and man of the theatre by the 1730s, whose first major commission as a painter (he was just 20 years old at the time) had been for twenty-eight tapestry cartoons illustrating episodes from Cervantes's Don Quixote (ordered for the Gobelins in 1714, and executed between 1715 and 1732). The Histoire de Don Quichotte hangings were highly innovative -- they were the first tapestries à alentours (with borders) -- and the series was a triumph for both Coypel and the Gobelins, remaining on the looms almost continuously from 1717 until 1794, with more than 200 individual pieces being woven; the young Coypel had shrewdly struck agreements with printmakers to share the profits from engravings of the series, quickly amassing a fortune from the popular success of the prints. Consequently, Coypel understood better than most painters the particular requirements for designs to translate successfully into tapestry, and he had an insider's knowledge of the popular conventions of the modern theatre, which enabled him to translate Quinault and Lully's 'tragédies en musique' onto canvas with optimal drama and power.

The Tenture des Fragments d'Opéra were to be four very large tapestry hangings (approximately 14 x 22 feet each) illustrating episodes from two tragic operas by Lully and Quinault. The first cartoon -- executed in 1733 -- depicted a scene from Roland (1685), itself based on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516), a proto-romantic epic poem about the conflict between the Christians and Saracens at the time of Charlemagne. The three remaining tapestries recreate moments from Armide (1686), a musical tragedy based on the most celebrated epic poem of the Italian Renaissance, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata(Jerusalem Delivered), first published in 1581. Tasso's epic tells a story of the First Crusade which ended with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the establishment of a Christian kingdom there. In Tasso's tale, Armida (rendered 'Armide' in Quinault's translation), a beautiful virgin witch, is sent by Satan (whose aid the Saracens had enlisted) to bring about the Crusaders' downfall by sorcery. She seeks revenge on the Christian prince Rinaldo ('Renaud') after he rescues his companions whom she had transformed into monsters, but at the sight of the handsome youth, she falls in love with him. Tasso's pastoral tale of hate-turned-to-love, of the lovers' dalliance in the magic kingdom of the sorceress, and Rinaldo's final desertion of her to return to the pursuit of his sacred destiny inspired Quinault's emotional libretto. Louis XIV had himself chosen the subjects of Lully and Quinault's tragédies lyriques and he wanted these performances to allude to the history of France and portray characters who exemplified the noble traits of French national character. As Esther Bell has revealed, it was this association with the historic cultural achievements of the French crown that may have recommended the operas as subjects for tapestries to the foreign-born queen, particularly as the early 1730s was a moment when France was swept up in unpopular military actions with her native Poland.

Coypel executed his designs out of order, not knowing exactly what episodes of Armide he would be requested to illustrate when he first received the commission. He painted a modello ofThe Fainting of Armida in 1733, enlarging it into a full-scale cartoon two years later. In it, Renaud bids Armide farewell as he is recalled to duty by his companions-in-arms; entreating him to remain with her, Armide swoons and faints when she realizes her pleas are in vain. Coypel may have chosen this moment in the story to paint first because he already had experience rendering it in a beautiful picture that he submitted to the Salon of 1725 (formerly Paris, collection of Baron Elie de Rothschild). In his Salon painting, he set the scene on a rocky seashore, from which Renaud is about to board a ship to depart, as is described by Tasso; in the tapestry modello, on the other hand, Coypel sets his scene in front of Armide's enchanted palace, true to Quinault's libretto. The modello of The Fainting of Armida is lost, but it is recorded in several eighteenth-century sale catalogues as having measured 3 feet and 10 inches by 6 feet (approximately 124 x 195 cm.); a smaller, autograph replica was offered at Christie's, New York, 26 October 2001, lot 343. The final cartoon is much damaged and in storage in the Louvre.

With this series, Coypel established the practice of submitting two models to the Gobelins: the 'original en petit' (or modello), and the large-scale cartoon that was worked up from themodello. As Edith Standen noted, when Coypel was elected Premier Peintre du Roi in 1747, Le Normant de Tournehem, Surintendant des Bâtiments, enforced this rule requiring two copies, which was termed the 'Coypel Regulation'. In all cases, the modelli were rendered with as high a level of finish as the completed cartoons. Tournehem and Coypel outlined three possible sizes for the largest cartoons, the biggest measuring 18 by 22 feet, roughly the size employed in theTenture des Fragments de l'Opéra. Following the enthusiastic reception of The Fainting of Armida, André-Hercule, cardinal de Fleury, Louis XV's chief minister, sent Coypel a letter on 28 March 1737 requesting future cartoons featuring scenes from Armide. Fleury proposed eight subjects, with Coypel to choose as he wished from the list. As Esther Bell has observed, the cardinal, working as the Queen's agent, was negotiating 'on her behalf to obtain her favorite scenes from Lully and Quinault's opera.'

Coypel was the favorite painter of the long-serving, Polish-born Maria Leszczynska and he painted almost two dozen pictures for her private apartments, most of them of religious subjects. Her extreme Catholic piety was widely remarked on, not always favourably; a medical report that was publically released before her marriage noted wryly that her only ailment was pain in the lumbar region from spending so much time on her knees in prayer. Despite her religiosity, she had a great passion for the theatre, an interest she shared with Coypel, whose satirical play, Le Triomphe de la Raison ('The Triumph of Reason'), had an illustrious debut performance on 17 July 1730 at a fête given at Versailles in her honour; the Queen was in attendance at the performance, which was dedicated to her. Shortly after arriving at Versailles in 1725, Maria Leszczynska had erected a small stage in the second anteroom of her apartments and there she established the 'Compagnie de la Reine', as Esther Bell first noted, where members of court would perform comedies and tragedies by Molière, Racine and, on occasion, Coypel. In addition to drama, there were also weekly concerts for invited guests in either theGrande Antechambre or the Salon de la Paix, where singers and musicians performed scenes or acts from operas by Lully, Rameau and other French composers. These short programmes must have been an impetus behind Coypel's Tenture des Fragments de l'Opera series: as Bell notes, 'the term "fragment" had a distinct meaning in the eighteenth century; it was used to describe the performance of separate acts of operas or ballets'. She observes that there are many mentions of performances of acts or airs from Roland and Armide given for the Queen's amusement in her apartments both before and after Coypel's commission. 'Destined for the physical space where these events took place, Coypel's images of specific acts, or "fragments" from the plays provided an elaborate visual backdrop to the Queen's smaller-scale, more informal productions. [His] scenes incorporated the traditional iconography of the seventeenth-century stage productions, thus recreating elements of the performances without having to provide added cost, construction, and costumes'.

The present painting is the modello, or 'original en petit', for Coypel's third entry in theFragments de l'Opéra series, the fiery Destruction of the Palace of Armida. The fifth and final act of Armide is set in the gardens of the witch's enchanted palace, and opens with Armide and Renaud's only love scene, following which the sorceress descends into the Underworld to commiserate with the demons on her passionate enslavement to the handsome crusader. In her absence, Renaud's companions-in-arms find him and break Armide's spell, persuading their compatriot to abandon her and follow the call of his destiny. As La Sagesse ('Wisdom') recounts: 'We will see Renaud, in spite of carnal pleasures Follow a faithful and wise counsel; We shall see him leave the enchanted palace Where he was held by Armide's love And fly to where Glory calls his courage'. Armide returns to her garden in time to confront Renaud as he prepares to leave, imploring him to take her with him as a slave if he will not remain in paradise as her lover. He hesitates, expresses pity for her, but affirms that Glory requires love to yield to duty, and departs. Left alone onstage, Armide laments her unremitting and unrecoverable loss in a passionate final monologue that ranks among the most thrilling arias of Baroque opera, the celebrated 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit' ('The perfidious Rinaldo flees from me').

Coypel's stunning canvas illustrates the spectacular final moments of the opera in which the sorceress, first devastated, then despairing, and finally enraged by Renaud's abandonment of her, orders the demons to rise from Hell and demolish her magical palace in an orgy of destruction and self-immolation, ultimately offering her own body for sacrifice. Disoriented and delusional, Armide believes, for a moment, that she has caught her retreating lover, singing 'Traitor, wait I have him!... I have his faithless heart. Ah! I sacrifice him to my wrath', before recovering her senses: 'What am I saying? where am I? Alas, poor Armide!' Humiliated, defeated and brought to her knees by sorrow, Lully's heroine rises a final time, mounts a flying chariot and departs amid the debris of her collapsing palace: 'Demons, destroy this palace. Away! And if it is possible, may my cursed love Remain buried in this place forever.'

Coypel translates this stunning moment of theatrical high drama into an overwhelmingly dynamic visual tableau. Seated upon a fiercely snarling, serpent-tailed dragon is the thwarted sorceress herself -- 'To all deceit she could her beauty frame, False, fair, and young, a virgin and a witch' -- who hovers above the chaos, and in her fury smites everything beneath her with a bright pink bolt of lightning from her magic wand. Four muscular, winged demons shoot into the sky, ripping apart the stone building with their bare hands, and tossing great marble columns and plinths, stone sculptures and fluted capitals into the air around them. Each figure is studied and rendered with academic precision, but in placing the viewer's point of view above ground level and immersing him in the centre of the action, the composition has been designed to maximize a sense of radical instability that mirrors the very subject being depicted.

If the final masterpiece of Lully and Quinault is the first great psychological character study in opera, it also offered unprecedented opportunities to create thrilling visual spectacle, which had been exploited by stage designers from the first production of Armide in 1686. The original set designs by Jean Berain (1640-1711) were celebrated in their day, and come down to us in engravings by Jean Dolivan (fig. 2), which make clear how elaborate and imaginative they were, their inventive aerial effects dependant on the most sophisticated stage technology yet devised. The famous stage machine that allowed Berain to create the illusion of Armide's palace was probably made up of a series of small panels with different images painted on each side which could turn individually, giving the effect of a gradually crumbling building. The engravings also demonstrate the degree to which Coypel consciously appropriated elements in his painting from the actual opera sets with which the queen and her friends would have been readily familiar: the broken statues, fluted columns and crumbling masonry all find their source in Berain, of course, but so too do the flying demons and the winged dragon that the witch rides bareback, a substitute for Armide's chariot (as specified in Quinault's libretto). In fact, the single surviving preparatory drawing for the painting (Sotheby's, New York, 9 January 1996, lot 185) is a study of Armide riding her dragon, almost exactly as they appear in the final composition; it is quite possible that this black and red chalk sketch depicts a model sitting on one of the mechanical beasts that were designed to rise above the stage and simulate flight in actual performances of the opera. Even the most obvious precedent for The Destruction of Armide's Palace -- the famous Sala dei Giganti by Giulio Romano in the Palazzo del Te in Mantua -- could have been known to Coypel only second-hand, as the artist never made the trip to Italy, and the overpowering perspectival tricks and trompe-l'oeil effects of the influential fresco decorations would likely have been transmitted to him through the medium of theatrical scenography, which had long before appropriated Giulio's tricks.

It would take a full year to transfer the composition of the present modello into the vast, finished cartoon that has been in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy (fig. 3) since 1872. Only a few modest changes were introduced in the cartoon, notably the addition of a fifth demon on the upper right, who does not appear in the present work. Coypel was paid only 2,000 livres for the cartoon, 4,000 less than he received for the first in the series and 2,000 less than he was given for the second. The reasons for the disparities in payments are unknown, but the artist expressed his dissatisfaction in a letter of 22 September 1737 addressed to the new Surintendant des Bâtiments, Philibert Orry. The letter may have had its intended effect: Coypel received a slightly more generous 2,800 livres for The Sleep of Renaud (Nantes; Musée des Beaux-Arts; modello in Neuchâtel, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire), the fourth and final cartoon in the set, finished in 1741 and exhibited in the Salon of that year. Only a few tapestries of each of the Tentures des Fragments d'Opéra survive; the finest version of The Destruction of Armide's Palace is today in the collections of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (see fig. 1), but at least seven weavings were undertaken, the earliest begun in 1738 in the atelier of Matthieu Monmerqué in Gobelins.

Although the cartoons became the property of the Crown, Coypel retained control over themodelli, which he seems to have sold or given away. We know from records of the Académiethat Coypel gave the present painting to the distinguished portrait painter and academician Louis Tocqué (1696-1772) in 1750 in honour of Tocqué's presentation to the Académie of his portrait of Le Normant de Tournehem; however, The Destruction of Armide's Palace was not listed in Tocqué's estate when he died in 1772 and it is not known when or under what circumstances it left his collection.

The cartoon of The Destruction of Armide's Palace was exhibited at the Salon of 1738 and, not surprisingly, made a sensation with its huge size and bold composition; the Chevalier Neufville de Brunaubois-Montador in his annual critique praised Coypel's startling composition as well as the depiction of the sorceress as both beautiful and terrifying. The final painting meets the dictionary definition of the Sublime: a remarkable and imposing achievement that creates in the viewer the unnerving and claustrophobic sensation of being about to be buried alive. Nevertheless, it is somewhat mechanical in execution, its surface marmoreal and lacking in real spontaneity. The lively virtuosity of the modello -- with its finely observed drawing, energetic and varied brushwork, and sensuous touches of shimmering pigment -- imbue it with a sparkle and vigour that are largely absent from the cartoon, which is, of necessity, a 'grande machine' whose execution was carried out mostly by Coypel's assistants. It is in the present, fully autograph model that one sees at work the mind of this intelligent artist, writer and stage impresario, designing his setting, arranging his many characters, adjusting and recalibrating each element of the tableau until he achieved the maximum dramatic effect; it is here thatArmide roars to life.

Our gratitude to Dr. Esther Bell for giving us generous access to her unpublished 2011 doctoral dissertation on Charles Coypel, which will be the subject of a forthcoming book; this entry is substantially based on material from her chapter 'Coypel and and Royal Patronage: The Tenture des Fragments d'Opéra (1733-1741) and the Tenture de Dresde (1741-1748)', (pp. 289-344).

Christie's. Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale, 3 July 2012. London, King Street