Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels

Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels, or Louise-Madeleine Hortemels, also called Magdeleine Horthemels (1686 – October 2, 1767), was a French engraver, the mother of Charles-Nicolas Cochin. She is also sometimes credited under her married name of Louise Madeleine Cochin or Madeleine Cochin.

Life The parish register of the parish of Saint-Benoit, Paris, shows that Louise-Magdeleine, baptized in 1686, was one of at least six children of Daniel Horthemels, a bookseller, and his wife Marie Cellier.

Active as a copperplate engraver by 1707, on 10 August 1713 Horthemels married another engraver, Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder. and Marie-Nicole (b. 1689, died after 1745),

Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels' son Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger became an engraver to the court of King Louis XV, a designer, writer, and art critic.

Horthemels died in Paris at her son's house on 2 October 1767.

Work Plan of the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, engraving by Horthemels, c. 1710 Horthemels was active in Paris as an engraver for nearly fifty years and produced more than sixty signed copper plates. and produced illustrations for a history of the Hôtel des Invalides and for a history of the Languedoc, in collaboration with her husband Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder.

Horthemels completed a great plate called Le feu d'artifice de la place de Navone, after Giovanni Pannini, which had been begun by her son Charles Nicolas Cochin.

In the early work of Horthemels as an engraver, there is a certain rigidity of line, while architectural detail is emphasized. However, her skill lay in engraving the work of others so that their genius was revealed and her own style was suppressed. Her hand was sure, and her work shows a delicacy and clarity of touch which were much admired in her own time.

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