Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Frontispiece to the New Method

Lequeu used drawing to interrogate the ancient canon of beauty, epitomized in this sheet by a venerated Roman marble bust thought to represent ideal human proportions. He divided the head into its component parts as if it comprised masonry blocks; beneath, he placed an array of the draftsman’s tools.

Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
Frontispiece to New Method, 1792
Pen and black ink, gray wash
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departement des Estampes et de la photographie