Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
June 29, 1790
Primary Source Reference:
Pennsylvania Packet (Philadelphia), 29 June 1790
Additional Source Text:
Also listed in Herald of Freedom (Boston), 13 July 1790
Notes:
These portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were probably produced by Jacques Bianchi, a physicist specializing in electricity. On 4 Oct 1781 he invited Franklin, then in Paris as American minister to France, to visit his "Cabinet des experiences [experiments]." Bianchi then presumably gave to Franklin -- or to William Temple Franklin (1760-1823), the son of New Jersey royal governor William Franklin and Benjamin's grandson serving as his secretary in Paris -- the likenesses of the king and queen. The portraits may have resembled the electrical images of Franklin that Bianchi executed, two of which he sent to the Abbé Martin Lefebvre de La Roche (one of which is now in the Franklin Papers at the American Philosophical Society, pictured here). Bianchi's method of producing an image with electricity is not known. Franklin Papers, Founders Online, National Archives / https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-36-02-0006
Thanks to Ellen Cohn, Editor-in-Chief of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, for providing this information.
