Cenotaph for Newton by Étienne-Louis Boullée

Étienne-Louis Boullée designed the Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, never intending for it to be built. Indeed, the building could not have been realised in its time. The dome was to be 150m (500ft) tall, which would exceed even the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

I must have first heard of Boullée when I saw Peter Greenaway's Belly of an Architect in the late 90s. I was too enamoured with Brian Dennehy's performance and Wim Merten's music (seriously, check it out) to really appreciate the architecture at the time. So, it was only relatively recently that I really began to appreciate Boullée's work.

Though there are plenty of illustrative realisations of the Cenotaph, there were some conflicts I had to resolve in the plans. To take in the full splendour of the monument, it needed to be set in a landscape to lend context to the scale. While there have been other attempts to realise this as an artwork, I had not seen any that attempted to set it properly into the environment, which led to the structure being abandoned in bare meadows or at the foot of a mountain. In my own effort to ground the edifice, I added a long drive to the approach. Unfortunately, this still left desolation leading up to the monument on each wing. Looking at other monuments and palaces in France and across Europe, I decided that the most appropriate way to fill in the landscape was with a huge formal Garden. My research took me down several rabbit holes and though I have not become a master designer of 18th-century European formal gardens, I am pleased with the result.

So here for you now; The Cenotaph for Newton by Étienne-Louis Boulle, as it looks in my head and how it would look on your wall.

This artwork is available on all the usual gear.