Introductory Image

A cell at the Convent of Santa Clara at Santa Trinità dei Monti, Rome. Painted in the 1760s by the French artist Charles-Louis Clérisseau, the trompe-l’oeil interior represents a ruined temple. The top photograph from ca. 1980 shows Clérriseau’s original boarded-up panel replaced with a functional door. The bottom photo, ca. 2000, shows the same wall after a recent restoration in which the modern door was again replaced by a boarded-up panel. The room’s furniture––desk, table and chairs that Clérriseau designed to resembled crumbling fragments––has been lost. Christopher Woodward, in his book In Ruins, writes: "For a very long time this room was known only by the design drawings and it was assumed to have disappeared, but in the 1960s it was discovered intact. … The room was made for Father LeSueur, a monk who was also a mathematician of distinction. One trompe-l’oeil book is lettered NEWTON on its spine. This was his bedroom and study and we can only speculate as to why he chose to live in ruins; was it, I wonder, a reminder that his scientific studies were only a particle of dust in God’s scheme?"