Project for a Domed Building with Colonnaded Façade
late 18th century
Medium
Pen and black ink, brush and gray wash; scale in pieds at bottom
Dimensions
sheet: 12 7/8 x 16 15/16 in. (32.7 x 43.1 cm)
Classification
Drawings|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1970
Accession Number
1970.736.13
Tags
Art Historical Context
This exquisite architectural drawing, titled *Project for a Domed with Colonnaded Faade*, offers a glimpse into the grand visionary designs of late 18-century France. Created anonymously by a French artist or architect, it depicts a majestic structure crowned by a prominent dome and flanked by a rhythmic colonnade of classical columns. The inclusion of a scale in *pieds* (French feet) at bottom suggests it was a practical working proposal, perhaps for a public building like a church, mausoleum, or pavilion, evoking the neoclassical revival inspired by ancient Roman and Greek architecture. Ren...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...