Charles-Antoine Coypel: ‘The canvas is his stage, and the figures are his actors’

Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) was the theatrical impresario of 18th-century French art, the conjuror of high drama and operatic passions who, as director of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, fostered a rethinking of history painting in the mid-1700s.

Outside France, Coypel is not as famous as he should be, perhaps because his life is inextricably linked to that of Louis XV (1710-1774), whom he served as court painter. However, with the 1725 masterpiece Rinaldo Abandoning Armida coming to auction in Paris from the Rothschild Collection on 15 November, Christie’s Head of Sale, Olivia Ghosh, believes it is time for a revival. ‘Coypel is immersed in the styles and pleasures of the era,’ says Ghosh. ‘He unites painting with all the flamboyancy of the theatre.’

Born in 1694 into one of the most brilliant dynasties of 17th- and 18th-century artists, Charles-Antoine was the grandson of Noël Coypel (1628-1707), the son of Antoine (1661-1722) and the nephew of Noël-Nicolas (1690-1734). He grew up in the illustrious environs of the Louvre Palace, where his grandfather and then his father served as director of the Académie Royale, a position he subsequently held in 1747.

Coypel came of age in the era of Louis XV, a sensual yet idealistic period when people believed that the pleasure given by a work of art was worthwhile, both for its own sake and as a means of attaining moral and spiritual greatness. As Coypel’s contemporary Voltaire wrote, the fine arts are ‘the children of abundance, of society and leisure’.

Artists were given relatively free rein to pursue their own interests, with little attempt by the authorities to impose a specific style upon them. So long as the work embodied the most prized qualities of the period — intelligence, charm and innate good taste — they could, within reason, paint what they pleased.

Coypel, like his father and grandfather, was a history painter, depicting classical and religious stories with an epic grandeur. He was employed by the king for the production of official decoration and altarpieces. It was a position that bestowed honours, money and celebrity. However, the young Coypel was torn between his love of the theatre and his love of art. When he was not painting, he could be found backstage. He was a prodigious (though not hugely successful) playwright and a literary theorist, and these twin passions found their way into his audaciously melodramatic work.

As the art historian Pierre Rosenberg wrote, ‘Coypel loved to paint the theatre… He persevered in believing (like Füssli half a century later) that to paint the theatre was to paint life. He thought he could update Ut pictura poesis [‘As is painting, so is poetry’] by replacing the word “poetry” with “theatre”.’

Ghosh says that this love of the theatre can be felt throughout Coypel’s oeuvre. ‘His paintings are worthy successors to Racine’s Phèdre or Corneille’s Le Cid. The canvas is his stage, and the figures, with their exaggerated gestures and heightened emotions, are his actors.’ Coypel’s distinctively fluid handling of paint and light only enhance this effect, adding glittering movement to his works.

The painting Rinaldo Abandoning Armida is no exception. It is suitably histrionic. The subject comes from the poem Jerusalem Delivered, published in 1581 by the Italian Renaissance writer Torquato Tasso. In the poem, the Saracen sorceress Armida falls in love with the crusader Rinaldo, and carries him off to an enchanted island. Coypel’s painting depicts Armida fainting from distress as her bewitched lover is spirited away to safety by his friends.

Inspiration for the painting came from the librettist Philippe Quinault’s best-known opera, Armide, which is an almost hallucinatory fantasy of madness, lust and black magic. Coypel’s stunning canvas depicts the penultimate act before Armida orders the demons to rise from hell and bring destruction upon her.

Coypel became the director of the Académie Royale at a time when history painting was losing its stature, and he set about reforming the school in favour of the genre. Working with the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and her uncle, Charles François Paul Le Normant de Tournehem, he introduced formal lessons in classical history, literature and mythology, and established prizes for paintings on historical and biblical subjects. Students were expected to hold their own in literary debates.

This had the result of stretching the intelligence of French artists and opening their minds to a whole range of literary and philosophical influences. That impact continued after the fall of the Ancien Régime in 1789, with a number of very talented artists, and one genius, Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), moving into the field.

This is the first time Rinaldo Abandoning Armida has been offered at auction since the artist’s posthumous sale. At the end of the 19th century it entered the celebrated Rothschild Collection, and hung on the walls of the Hôtel de Masseran alongside Rembrandt’s The Standard Bearer.

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