Funeral for Marie-Thérèse of Spain, Dauphine of France, in the Church of Nôtre Dame, Paris, on November 24, 1746 (c. 1746): Art, History and Details

Funeral for Marie-Thérèse of Spain, Dauphine of France, in the Church of Nôtre Dame, Paris, on November 24, 1746 (c. 1746) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles-Nicolas Cochin (French, 1715–1790).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

As an official draftsman to the king, Charles-Nicolas Cochin was responsible for documenting royal events, festivities, and ceremonies. When the Spanish princess Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XV’s eldest son, died in childbirth, she was given two lavish funerals: one at the Church of Saint Denis, and another, represented in this drawing, at Notre Dame in Paris. Cochin’s drawing shows how the interior of the gothic cathedral was theatrically redecorated in the current rococo style. Beneath the majestic canopy in the center of the nave, an ornate arched structure, a baldequin, contains the princess’s coffin.

Object facts

• Title: Funeral for Marie-Thérèse of Spain, Dauphine of France, in the Church of Nôtre Dame, Paris, on November 24, 1746
• Date: c. 1746
• Creator attribution: Charles-Nicolas Cochin (French, 1715–1790)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and black ink and gray wash heightened with white gouache on cream laid paper, incised (with graphite) for transfer
• Dimensions: Sheet: 45 x 30.9 cm (17 11/16 x 12 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2000.2

A detail from the museum

Charles-Nicolas Cochin worked closely with the branch of the royal household charged with organizing and presenting royal ceremonies to produce prints such as the one related to this drawing.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• DeGrazia, Diane, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” March 17, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Foster, Carter E. "Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Festival Design for the Menus-Plaisirs." Master Drawings 39, no. 3 (2001): 260-278.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.