Minneapolis Institute of Art

Fireworks Display Presented to the King and Queen by the City of Paris for the Birth of the Dauphin

Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune

Date

1782

Medium

Etching and engraving

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The festivities celebrating the birth of the Dauphin of France, Louis Joseph, to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette culminated with this elaborate fireworks display. Staged on the Place de la Grève in Paris, opposite the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), the fireworks were launched from a temporary structure constructed expressly for the event, a neoclassical temple atop a mountainous base flanked by fountains and two giant illuminated columns. Moreau captures the dramatic pyrotechnics against the nighttime sky-the rockets, the sunbursts, and the billowing smoke-although he certainly exaggerates the scale of the spectacle just as he did with the size of the plaza and crowd. The young heir to the French throne died in 1789 at the age of seven of tuberculosis, just weeks before the outbreak of the French Revolution. Europe

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