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.

Funerary monument, from Civil Architecture

Through an agglomeration of architectural decoration, Lequeu transformed a Corinthian column into a funerary monument. Reminders of death and ancient sepulchral rituals abound: a ceremonial urn atop the column; an ancient tear vessel, or lachrymatory, below; and a skull in the pediment above a ceremonial torch. He even incorporated pairs of crossed tibias in the coffered decoration of the cornice seen in the plan at lower left. Most striking, however, is that a large part of the page is dominated not by the monument but by its shadow, which forms a shape that is both strange and ominous.

Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
Funerary Monument, from Civil Architecture
Pen and black ink, brown and gray wash, watercolor
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departement des Estampes et de la photographie