Soliman, Guided by Ismeno, Enters the Underground Passage Leading to Jerusalem

Watermark: D & C BLAUW ? (see Churchill 82).
This sheet belongs to an ensemble of eighteen preparatory sketches (seven for vignettes and eleven for headpieces) for illustrations and two prints after Cochin for an 1784-85 edition of Torquato Tasso's "La Gerusalemme Liberata" published in Paris by François Ambroise Didot. These illustrations were commissioned by Monsieur, the Comte de Provence and the brother of Louis XVI who later reigned as Louis XVIII (1755-1824). The eighteen drawings were part of an album of 102 drawings broken up and sold in several lots by Sotheby's, London, in 1970. The present sheet is the preparatory drawing for the headpiece to Canto X, Ott. 29. The composition is very similar to the corresponding finished drawing in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library which is slightly smaller in size, though neither is signed or dated.