Christophe Cochet

Christophe Cochet went to Rome, where his presence is attested since 1615, and where he stayed alongside the painter Simon Vouet, at a house on Via Serena, in the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina.

During his stay in Rome he was maintained by the Queen Mother Marie de' Medici who granted him an annual allowance, which was known to reach 400 Livres in 1618.

This might be the Dido originally displayed at the Château de Marly (nowadays at the Louvre in Paris), which was previously identified as a Lucretia or Cleopatra (all of them known for a dramatic suicide).

Cochet was also the creator of several sculpted funerary monuments: he was engaged in 1631 to realize the tomb of Roland Neuburg (died 1629) for the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul Church at Sarcelles.

The monument, in the form of a praying man perched on a high pedestal flanked by torch-bearing geniuses, is lost - but remains known due to an anonymous drawing preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.