Une cloche battait dans la tour [A bell was striking in the tower], illustration to Edmond Picard, Le Juré

Le Juré [The Juror] is monologue in five acts by Edmond Picard, a lawyer and art lover. The story involves a juror who has voted to convict a man of murder, but who grows to doubt the man’s guilt and descends into madness. Picard asked the symbolist artist Odilon Redon to make moody drawings to accompany the first production. The project was so successful that they went on to publish the play with illustrations by Redon. Redon’s drawings are not literal illustrations of the text; rather, they are freer interpretations. Here in the frontispiece to the second act, we see the clock tour of Saint Gudule Cathedral in Brussels as its deep-bass bell strikes the hour.