This sheet presents the draftsman’s arsenal: brushes, penholders, graphite, rulers, ruling pens, and erasers. In the accompanying text, Lequeu described his drawing process as a series of stages, beginning with contour lines and following with the addition of light and shadow. He was deeply conscious of the diverse sources of his materials, which, as his annotations indicate, came from as far as China, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Siam (now Thailand).

In the 107 drawings that comprise his Civil Architecture, Lequeu offered methods for depicting three-dimensional forms, the architectures “of various peoples scattered on the Earth,” and his own inventions. He paid special attention to “shadows and their different effects projected on plans, elevations and profiles by the sunlight or burning bodies,” which was the subject of
a larger debate among contemporary architects.

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.

Civil Architecture includes a number of didactic sheets outlining visual models for technical draftsmanship. This page offers instructions for creating volume and using light and shadow to define complex three-dimensional objects, like armillary spheres and terrestrial globes. The caption at bottom, “Globe of the Earth, or a framework of a dome,” reflects the wide range of subjects encompassed by Lequeu’s guidelines.

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.

Applying his methodical approach to proportions, Lequeu used a protractor to draw a mouth frontally and in profile. As diagrammed, the contour of lips drawn according to this method would be derived from a series of curved arches extrapolated from a sequence of fixed points. The commentary compares the sinuous line of a closed mouth to a cupid’s bow, evoking the “sweet melancholy smile” of Venus’s “perfect mouth.”

To understand the structure that underlies facial beauty and expressions, Lequeu studied the musculature of
the face and its geometric components. His notes on proportions indicate his familiarity with published anatomical texts. Lequeu’s commentary, however, ironically acknowledges the limitations of his method, noting that “it would be impossible to determine the true combination of passions on our face.”

In 1773, the Rouen architect Jean Baptiste Le Brument was entrusted with building a chapel for the city’s hospital and proposed capping the building with a stone dome. Lequeu, who worked for Le Brument, drew a design for the stone dome from five different angles on this sheet. At lower left, it is outlined horizontally in a rectangular diagram, half viewed from underneath and half from above. This is elaborated in the upper registers, showing an exterior elevation and two cross- sections, with and without coffering. The designs are connected by dotted lines and corresponding letters,
inviting viewers to rotate the imaginary structure in their mind’s eye. (Ultimately, a lighter and less costly wooden- framed structure was adopted.)

The date of this design’s creation and the location
of the mill it depicts—the town of Guiseniers, between Rouen and Paris—suggest that Lequeu executed it during one of his frequent stays at his granduncle’s residence there. The detailed rendering and precisely numbered list of components elaborate on an illustration of rustic agriculture in Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–66), which Lequeu studied closely.

Stoves, often used in place of fireplaces to heat structures, were frequently placed in thoroughfares where residents would not linger. Lequeu took this necessary but smoky feature as the basis for a meditation on architectural and bodily heat. A snaked column alludes to the famous serpentine tripod at Delphi, playfully comparing the hot air produced by the stove with oracular smoke. Above the firebox, the chaste goddess Diana holds an oil lamp suggestively, emphasizing the tension between the heat of desire and the virginity required to tend the temple fire.

The Hôtel de Montholon, built in 1785 by François Soufflot and still standing on one of the Grands Boulevards in northern Paris, is a rare example of a sumptuous neoclassical mansion of the eighteenth century. Lequeu was appointed site foreman, in charge of its construction and interior design. This unrealized design for a living room is dominated by a pair of caryatids, sculptural columns in the form of young women thought to have been enslaved symbolically as architectural supports.

The Hôtel de Montholon, built in 1785 by François Soufflot and still standing on one of the Grands Boulevards in northern Paris, is a rare example of a sumptuous neoclassical mansion of the eighteenth century. Lequeu was appointed site foreman, in charge of its construction and interior design. This unrealized design for a living room is dominated by a pair of caryatids, sculptural columns in the form of young women thought to have been enslaved symbolically as architectural supports.

In an effort to establish his architectural career, Lequeu courted aristocratic clients with designs for country residences in the waning moments of the ancien régime. Construction began on a villa in Rouen for one patron, Louis-Jacques Grossin, comte de Bouville, but the project was halted by the revolution and the count’s flight from France. That this intimate villa was conceived as a Temple of Silence is indicated by the figure of Harpocrates, the Hellenistic god of secrets, in the tympanum. The design was included in an 1813 publication on civil architecture by Lequeu’s friend Jean-Charles Krafft, suggesting contemporary awareness of the artist’s work.