Elevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, Paris

Elevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, Paris

Jean Jacques Lequeu

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The façade depicted in this drawing is of the so-called Hôtel de Montholon, a commission given to François Soufflot le Romain and executed by Jean Jacques Lequeu for the wealthy magistrate and later president of the Parlement of Normandy, Nicolas de Montholon. The hôtel is situated on 23, boulevard Poissonnière in Paris (previously the Boulevard Montmartre). A print after this drawing, also by Lequeu exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and might suggest that Lequeu intended to publish all the designs for the Hôtel, most of which are part of an album donated by Lequeu to the Bibliothèque Nationale before his death.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Elevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, ParisElevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, ParisElevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, ParisElevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, ParisElevation of the Facade of the Hôtel de Montholon, Paris

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.