Erotic Imagination

When Lequeu’s drawings entered the Royal Library, twenty-seven sheets with “lascivious and obscene” subjects were relegated to the restricted access division, later dubbed Hell (L’Enfer). Born in an era that celebrated libertinism, investigations of sexuality, and antiquities with erotic subjects, Lequeu created works ranging from explicit anatomical studies to suggestive juxtapositions of flesh and stone.