Entablature II (C.139) introduced a warm, metallic palette — bronze, gold, and cream — that gave it a different quality from the cooler, more austere Entablature I. The collaged metallic element was more prominent here, occupying a wider band within the picture and introducing a reflective surface that changed with the light, the physical material of the collage asserting itself against the screenprint marks around it.

Roy Lichtenstein's use of collaged metallic elements across the Entablature Series was consistent with his broader interest in industrial materials throughout his print work. Metal foil and reflective surfaces had appeared in the Ten Landscapes, and the Entablature prints extended this into a new context — here the metallic collage evoked the gilded and polished surfaces of neoclassical decoration itself, the material of the print mimicking the material of its subject.

The series also reflected a specific moment in American urban culture. The late 1970s saw increasing critical attention to the neoclassical and Art Deco buildings of American cities, which had been under threat from urban redevelopment and were now beginning to be recognised as architecturally significant. Lichtenstein's attention to the entablature was in part a response to this revaluation — an examination of how monumental architecture represented civic authority at the moment when that authority was being reassessed. Entablature II (C.139) participated through means: not advocating for preservation but looking closely at the decorative system through which power had chosen to present itself.

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