1677
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Representation des Machines qui ont servi à eslever les deux grandes pierres qui couvrent le fronton de la principale entrée du Louvre is a 1677 by Sébastien Le Clerc I, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy construction site: ropes, pulleys, and wooden cranes hoist a giant stone slab onto the Louvre’s roof. This isn’t just a building snapshot—it’s an early engineering diagram. The artist worked for King Louis XIV, turning royal projects into public PR. Every knot and beam is drawn with ruler-straight precision, like a how-to manual for moving mountains. If you like this mix of art and engineering, look up the technique called *impasto*.
Sébastien Leclerc’s etching showing the construction of one facade of the Louvre Palace in Paris shows the machines used to drag and raise a sixty-foot-long stone to cover both sides of a pediment. Leclerc shows a machine in the left foreground that drags the large stone while in the background, at the top of the pediment and an elaborate scaffolding, cranes can be seen raising and placing stone. Leclerc was among a number of printmakers who worked for King Louis XIV, helping to document his many building campaigns and art collections.
King Louis XIV made improvements to the living quarters of the Louvre Palace as seen in this 1677 print, but soon abandoned Paris for his palace at Versailles, where he lived until his death in 1715.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Sébastien Leclerc or Le Clerc ( 26 September 1637— 25 October 1714) was an artist from the French province of the Three Bishoprics.
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