Eighteenth-century artists, writers, and engineers shared a fascinating with travel, faster and further than humans had gone before. In 1781, James Watt perfected his Watt steam engine; William Herschel discovered a seventh planet, Uranus; and the balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard built an unsuccessful flying machine with four wings for the pilot to flap using levers and foot pedals. Also that year Réstif de La Bretonne (1734-1806) published La découverte australe par un homme. Michael Lynn writes,

“Numerous authors speculated about the possibility of human flight in the period before the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their invention [1783]. These include flight as a peripheral notion in a larger work as well as books in which flight provided a convenient device for travelling to distant lands (or even the starts, moons, and planets). Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, attached bottles of dew to himself; when heated, he claimed, the dew would vaporize and rise up… Such fanciful descriptions abounded in the eighteenth century including Voltaire’s Micromégas and less well-known books such as Joseph Galien’s L’Art de naviguer dans les airs or Donimgo Gonsales’s The Man in the Moone. …Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Le Nouveau Dédale, suggested the use of compressed air, judiciously released, would, along with a rudder, allow someone to fly through the air. Restif de la Bretonne goes back to the idea of human wings in his book, La Découverte australe. –Michael Lynn, The Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783–1820 (2015).

Réstif de La Bretonne (1734-1806), La découverte australe par un homme-volant, ou, Le Dédale français: nouvelle très-philosophique: suivie de la Lettre d’un singe, &ca. …. [Southern Discovery by a flying man or the French Daedalus; Very philosophical news: Followed by the Letter of a Monkey] preface by Jacques Lacarrière (Paris: Leïpsick, [1781]). Provenance: M. Lemoyne.

For many, it is the engravings by Louis Binet (1744-ca.1800), the official illustrator of Rétif, that make this tale of fantasy and fiction so appealing. Princeton has finally acquired a first edition with Binet’s wonderful plates, depictions the hero Victorin as he sweeps his beloved, Christine, up into his arms and flies her away to a place where their romance is not forbidden.

Together, they found the utopian society of Megapatagonia, where language is backwards French (the capital is Sirap) and clothes are topsy-truvy (note the shoe-hats posted further down). There are frogmen, sheepmen, hairymen, elephantmen, dogmen, snakemen, and even a few odd women. Their motto: everyone is equal. The inter-marriage between their children and various animals is reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro’s recent film The Shape of Water (2017).

Here are a few more plates designed by Binet in his Paris studio at rue Aubry le Boucher 34.

See also: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b22000982&prev=search

Pièrre-Etienne Maillard, respondens. Quaestio Theologica. Quis fecit hominem ad imaginem suam? Paris: Printed by Hecquet for the Sorbonne, 1768. Large double-sheet engraved broadside, upper sheet with engraving, lower sheet with engraved cartouche containing letterpress text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two spectacular, previously unrecorded Sorbonne thesis broadsides, one from 1768 and the other 1769. Both are published by Robert Hecquet (1693-1775) announcing the defense of two doctoral dissertations at the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne. These monumental engravings would have been posted on the walls of the school to announce the pubic defense of the student’s thesis.

For each, two large sheets have been pasted together with the individual plate marks approximately 53 x 68 cm at the top and 54 x 70 cm at the bottom. The top print features an allegorical scene and the bottom the text of the thesis, so the size varies according the the length of the text.

The first from 1768 was created for Pièrre-Etienne Maillard, responding to the question: “Quaestio theologica: Quis fecit hominem ad imaginem suam? Gen. c. 1. v. 27 “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. The second from 1769 lists Augustin Maillard as the respondent, with his subject “Quis de tenebris nos vocavit in admirabile lumen suum? from Peter c. 2.v. 9 “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people”.

We are fortunate to have the name of the artists responsible for the second engraving inscribed: “Boucher pinx,” and “Hecquet excudit,” at the bottom of the top sheet. This refers to the extraordinarily talented painter and printmaker François Boucher (1703-1770), who was to the end of his illustrious career. Only four years earlier, he had been appointed to the two highest positions in the French arts establishment: first painter to the king and director of the Royal Academy.

Unfortunately, the inscription on the 1768 engraving is cut-off: “à Paris chez Hecquet place de Cambray à l’Image St. Maur.” One might assume it is also the work of Boucher, but there is no proof.

In her paper “Disputatio and Dedication: Seventeenth-century thesis prints in the southern Low Countries,” Gwendoline de Mûelenaere writes,

“In early modern institutions of higher education, academic dissertations to be defended
in public were published in the form of decorated broadsheets summarising the student’s conclusions. The aim of these engraved posters was mainly to advertise the disputation and to introduce the theses in question. They also presented a visual programme of its unfolding, and could be collected as a souvenir after the ceremony. This practice was common mostly in Catholic countries: Italy, France, the Southern Netherlands, Germany and Austria. From the early seventeenth century onwards, thesis prints developed into abundantly illustrated documents accompanied by a dedication, and they were meant to affirm the laureates’ position in society and to glorify their patrons. Artists created elaborate communicational devices to convey scientific as well as rhetorical messages to the spectators of the defence and to subsequent readers of the poster.”

François Boucher (1703-1770), artist. Augustin Maillard, respondents. Quaestio Theologica. Quis de tenebris nos vocavit in admirabile lumen suum? Paris: Printed by Robert Hecquet for the Sorbonne, 1769. Large double-sheet engraved broadside, upper sheet with engraving, lower sheet with engraved cartouche containing letterpress text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

No publisher is credited with this or any of the other sets of French playing cards featuring twenty-five monarchs or literary scenes or fairy tale characters. Princeton’s newly acquired set features English royalty from Egbert (771/775–839), King of Wessex to George III (1738–1820), King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Three historical figures are engraved on each card with biographical details and stencil coloring.

Other known titles within the same series include
Grand jeu des Aventures de Robinson avec figures coloriées (1810)
Grand jeu des Aventures de Gil Blas avec figures coloriées (1800)
Grand jeu des Aventures de Don Quichotte avec figures coloriées (1800s)
Grand jeu des fables choisies avec figures coloriées (1810)
Grand jeu des Fables D’Ésope avec figures coloriées (1809)
Grand jeu des Fables de la Fontaine avec figures coloriées (1810)
Grand jeu de l’Histoire de Paul et Virginie: avec figures coloriées (1815)
Grand jeu de La petite cendrillon avec figures coloriées (1800s)

Grand jeu de l’histoire d’Angleterre depuis Egbert jusqu’à George III = Great Game in the History of England from Egbert to George III ([Paris?, ca. 1810]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018