CHARLES ANTOINE COYPEL (PARIS 1694-1752)
The tomb
Canvas.
In wooden frame and gilded stucco with palmette decoration.
67 x 57 cm.
Antique label on the back: N4808?082
(Antique restorations, small scratches).

Engraved by François Joullain after 1734, with variants, the engraving may be between the sketch and the final realization. On the print, the stone background is replaced by Ionic pilasters, two clouds with angels are added on either side of the painting, and the scale and the bottom of the cross behind the figures are not visible, but are known to have been represented in the large format (as in our sketch).

Bibliography: Thierry Lefrançois, "Charles Coypel 1694-1752", Paris, Arthena, 1994, p. 276, P. 158 (work disappeared)

This sketch is preparatory to the high altar of the church of the Collège Saint-Nicolas du Louvre, which was located between the present Place du Carrousel and the top of the Tuileries garden, at the level of the window on the Seine side, i.e. the Trémoille and Lesdiguières pavilions. It was razed to the ground before the Revolution.
Born just a stone's throw from the church, and a close neighbour when his parents moved to the Galeries du Louvre four years later, Charles-Antoine Coypel spent his entire life within the walls of the château. In 1734, when he was already a famous painter who had risen through the ranks of the Académie Royale, the company of the Collège Saint-Nicolas asked him to be the godfather of the new bell that was to be cast. In exchange, the painter offered to donate a painting for the high altar.

What he submits in this sketch is, however, very ambitious, as the painting is included in a complex decorative ensemble with a glory from which rays of glory escape above and weeping angels sculpted before a tomb towards which the body of Christ slides.
Despite the expense of masonry and woodwork involved in this project, he was accepted and Sébastien-Antoine and Paul-Ambroise Slodtz took charge of the sculptures and stucco work.

Abbé Demayne, canon of the church of Saint-Nicolas in the Louvre, published details of the entire operation in the Mercure de France of October 1734 (pp. 2169-2179), mentioning the variants between the "design" (the sketch) and the final realization due to the adaptation to the configuration of the place.