Cenotaph for Newton

1784

Black ink and brown-grey wash, sheet 17 1/4 × 26 in. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

A monument to Isaac Newton imagined as one giant sphere: architecture reduced to pure geometry.

Look at

One huge sphere dominates the sheet, set on stepped circular bases ringed with trees.
Wash shades the sphere from light to dark, so a flat drawing reads as a solid globe.
The people at its foot are tiny specks, which makes the scale vast.

One of a set of drawings for the project; the BnF catalogues it under fantastic architecture and commemorative monuments.
Signed by Boullée and dated 1784.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain