The Architect's Dream by Thomas Cole

An architect lies on top of a colossal column while all of architectural history rises before him: Egyptian buildings far off, Greek temples in the middle, Roman ones up close, and Gothic too. Thomas Cole painted the profession's ultimate daydream in 1840, in just five weeks. Its client, the architect Ithiel Town, refused it, so Cole painted him an ordinary landscape instead and kept this one for the rest of his life. Toledo Museum of Art.