COYPEL, the name of a French family of painters. Noel Coypel (1628-1707), also called, from the fact that he was much influenced by Poussin, Coypel le Poussin, was the son of an unsuccessful artist. Having been employed by Charles Errard to paint some of the pictures required for the Louvre, and having afterwards gained considerable fame by other pictures produced at the command of the king, in 1672 he was appointed director of the French Academy at Rome. After four years he returned to France; and not long after he became director of the Academy of Painting. The Martyrdom of St James in Notre Dame is perhaps his finest work.
His son, Antoine Coypel (1661-1772), was still more celebrated than his father. Antoine studied under his father, with whom he spent four years at Rome. At the age of eighteen he was admitted into the Academy of Painting, of which he became professor and rector in 1707, and director in 1714. In 1716 he was appointed king’s painter, and he was ennobled in the following year. Antoine Coypel received a careful literary education, the effects of which appear in his works; but the graceful imagination displayed by his pictures is marred by the fact that he was not superior to the artificial taste of his age. He was a clever etcher, and engraved several of his own works. His Discours prononcés dans les conférences de l’ Académie royale de Peinture, &c.; appeared in 1741.
Antoine’s half-brother, Noel Nicholas Coypel (1692-1734), was also an exceedingly popular artist; and his son, Charles Antoine (1694-1752), was painter to the king and director of the Academy of Painting. The latter published interesting academical lectures in Le Mercure and wrote several plays which were acted at court, but were never published.
COYPU, the native name of a large South American aquatic rodent mammal, known very generally among European residents in the country as nutria (the Spanish word for otter) and scientifically as Myocastor (or Myopotamus) coypu. Its large size, aquatic habits, partially webbed hind-toes, and the smooth, broad, orange-coloured incisors, are sufficient to distinguish this rodent from the other members of the family Capromyidae. Coypu are abundant in the fresh waters of South America, even small ponds being often tenanted by one or more pairs. Should the water dry up, the coypu seek fresh homes. Although subsisting to a considerable extent on aquatic plants, these rodents frequently come ashore to feed, especially in the evening. Several young are produced at a birth, which are carried on their mother’s back when swimming. The fur is of some commercial value, although rather stiff and harsh; its colour being reddish-brown. (See [Rodentia].)
COYSEVOX, CHARLES ANTOINE (1640-1720), French sculptor, was born at Lyons on the 29th of September 1640, and belonged to a family which had emigrated from Spain. The name should be pronounced Coëzevo. He was only seventeen when he produced a statue of the Madonna of considerable merit; and having studied under Lerambert and trained himself by taking copies in marble from the Greek masterpieces (among others from the Venus de Medici and the Castor and Pollux), he was engaged by the bishop of Strassburg, Cardinal Fürstenberg, to adorn with statuary his château at Saverne (Zabern). In 1666 he married Marguerite Quillerier, Lerambert’s niece, who died a year after the marriage. In 1671, after four years spent on Saverne, which was subsequently destroyed by fire in 1780, he returned to Paris. In 1676 his bust of the painter Le Brun obtained admission for him to the Académie Royale. A year later he married Claude Bourdict.
In consequence of the influence exercised by Le Brun between the years 1677 and 1685, he was employed by Louis XIV. in producing much of the decoration and a large number of statues for Versailles; and he afterwards worked, between 1701 and 1709, with no less facility and success, for the palace at Marly, subsequently destroyed in the Revolution.
Among his works are the “Mercury and Fame,” first at Marly and afterwards in the gardens of the Tuileries; “Neptune and Amphitrite,” in the gardens at Marly; “Justice and Force,” at Versailles; and statues, in which the likenesses are said to have been remarkably successful, of most of the celebrated men of his age, including Louis XIV. and Louis XV. at Versailles, Colbert (at Saint-Eustache), Mazarin (in the church des Quatre-Nations), Condé the Great (in the Louvre), Maria Theresa of Austria, Turenne, Vauban, Cardinals de Bouillon and de Polignac, Fénelon, Racine, Bossuet (in the Louvre), the comte d’Harcourt, Cardinal Fürstenberg and Charles Le Brun (in the Louvre). Coysevox died in Paris on the 10th of October 1720.
Besides the works given above he carved about a dozen memorials, including those to Colbert (at Saint-Eustache), to Cardinal Mazarin (in the Louvre), and to the painter Le Brun (in the church of Saint Nicholas-du-Chardon).