The second work in Lichtenstein's Cathedral Series shifts from the pale luminosity of Cathedral #1 to something considerably more charged. Cathedral #2 (C.76) sets Rouen's façade in overlapping fields of rose-pink and blue, the Ben-Day dot structure now dense enough that the architectural detail beneath it becomes almost submerged — visible as an underlying rhythm rather than a legible surface. Lichtenstein's close reading of Monet's Rouen series was never simply an act of homage or parody. It was a systematic interrogation of how Impressionism had constructed its authority — through the fiction of unmediated perception, the myth of the painter's eye as a uniquely sensitive instrument.

By replacing Monet's varied, gestural touch with the mechanical regularity of the dot, Lichtenstein made visible the gap between what Impressionism claimed to be doing and what it was actually doing: constructing an image of perception rather than recording perception itself. Cathedral #2 (C.76) presses this point further than the first work in the series.

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