The Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the Younger

The Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the Younger

Pier Leone Ghezzi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ghezzi was the first professional caricaturist actually paid by his subjects. Based in Rome, he drew local patrons and tourists. This work makes fun of four influential French visitors. At the left stands the twenty-two year old Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Vandières. Through the influence of his sister, Madame to Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress, the marquis had been appointed the next Director Général des Bâtiments du Roi (Director of the King’s Buildings). To prepare, the young man made a study tour of Italy and is shown discussing a drawing of a church with the architect Soufflot. Cochin, an artist-engraver, who made such drawings on the trip, stands at right, while the art critic Le Blanc appears in front. Ghezzi exaggerated his subjects’ physical quirks without cruelty and gave the young Vandières a fish-like profile, perhaps punning on his family name Poisson (French for fish).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the YoungerThe Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the YoungerThe Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the YoungerThe Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the YoungerThe Marquis de Vandières, Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc, Germain Soufflot, and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the Younger

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.