Lot 2203 Dα

The French painter Pierre Antoine Demachy specialised in architecture picture. Like his contemporary Hubert Robert, he was especially interested in the changes to the Parisian cityscape that took place during the last years of the “Ancien Régime” and the first years of the French Revolution.
Our decorative pictures can be seen as counterparts. They each show a design or fantastical construction, with one view from the outside and one in cross-section. Since there is no congruence between the two buildings, it could probably be a building in the design and development stage.
The perspective of the pictures is unusual, the figures seeming tiny in front of the respective monumental constructions. This lends them a serious and incidental cool character that is commonly associated with French revolutionary architecture.