The First Fireworks

Simon Werrett looks back at the history of pyrotechnics, noting that prints like the one above were markers not so much of fun and games but of court power in 16th-18th-century Europe:

[D]isplays … typically featured symbolic or allegorical decorations and scenery which were intended to present a more specific message to audiences. The figure of a lion might represent a powerful king, or the slaying of a dragon might signal the conquest of the king’s enemies. As such, it was important to states to make sure that everyone understood the message of fireworks, and so artists were commissioned to engrave large prints of displays for distribution to relevant audiences. Fireworks prints became something of a genre in their own right, and were made by artists across Europe for several hundred years. …

Images were typically large, printed on paper, or sometimes silk, and distributed either at the display or as gifts to diplomats and other courts subsequently. Prints were not intended to capture the reality of a performance, like a photograph, but to serve as well-ordered representations of official events. Fireworks prints acted as a front-stage, sanitizing the messiness of the real event to leave only an idealized account. In fact many fireworks failed – displays often witnessed accidents, sometimes quite horrible, and there were frequently mistakes.

(Image: fireworks at The Hague, June 14, 1713 on the occasion of the “Peace of Utrecht,” via Wikimedia Commons)