# Preliminary Study for the 'Maison d'un Cosmopolite' [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [VAUDOYER, Antoine-Laurent-Thomas]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Ink, pencil and washes on paper, 115 × 242 mm ## Commentary This drawing, inscribed: 'Maggio 1782' is part of a series of projects from the 1780s and 1790s that try to think about the sphere as a built volume. The most famous is <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/b/boullee/cenotap2.html'\)" href="/html/b/boullee/cenotap2.html">Boullée's Newton Cenotaph</a> but it is one among many. It is not only the sphere that is fashionable at the time, but any kind of simple geometrical form: the square and the cube - also the pyramid, but the pyramid is associated with death. ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()