For this depiction of a grotto in the gardens of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Lequeu turned to Ovid’s tale of the nymph Arethusa. She was transformed into a spring to elude being raped by the river god Alephus; the god, in turn, transformed himself into a river to follow her further. Here, Alephus is represented as the cascade at left, and the waters mingle in a cavern whose oculus Lequeu’s inscription refers to as an orifice. The figure of the nymph recalls a description in the erotic Renaissance novel The Dream of Poliphilo. Lequeu owned the 1804 edition of the text.
At upper right, Lequeu envisioned his own tomb, containing his “cadaver embalmed in bitumen.” The sepulchre is surmounted by the instruments of Lequeu’s profession as an architectural draftsman, including a compass, rulers, and porte-crayon. Beneath the flap of paper on which the tomb is drawn, however, is an alternative design bearing a Greek cross—an echo of Lequeu’s bitter remark that he carried the cross his entire life.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
Cavern in the Gardens of Isis, from Civil Architecture, ca. 1810–25
Pen and black ink, brown and gray wash, watercolor, patch with revision at upper right
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departement des Estampes et de la photographie
Jennifer Tonkovich: The last decade of Lequeu's life leading up to the donation of his drawings to the Royal Library was rife with challenges. At the end of September 1815, the 58-year-old Lequeu was forced into retirement with a modest annual pension. He became increasingly isolated and his morale seems to have deteriorated. His writings reveal his feelings of bitterness and anger toward his peers. He described his outlook in a letter. As for the architect, Lequeu, having lost the property of his ancestors by revolutionary laws and by other misfortunes that result from it, he consoles himself with his wisdom, he cultivates the arts and sciences he loves. Bored with the deceitful world and its extravagances, he seeks in the solitary paths of the fields the secrets of nature, the course of the stars, but above all, he strives to adorn his soul by pure virtue, this gift of God. But he was not to have a tranquil time in his retirement. He struggled, as all urban dwellers do, with noisy neighbors, lamenting to his landlord, "If you have a good memory, you'll recall that my room is my design office where I work. That people at home must not hear a hurly-burly in the morning, including the Lord's days of rest. And even at night, two individuals noisily drop boots and bang shoes." It was in his apartment where he produced over 800 drawings and where he contended with obnoxious neighbors. That Lequeu died at the age of 69 on the 28th of March 1820.