Ode on the Eighteenth Century

Marie-Antoinette, reine de France (detail)

by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier d’Agoty (French, 1740 – 1786) oil on canvas, 1775

Sibylla Aegyptia

“The diabolical maskquerade, or the dragons-feast as acted by the Hell-Fire-Club, at Somerset House in the Strand”

‘Thus impious wretches, without fear or shame, feast and sing praises in the Devil’s name...’

Chatelaine with Watch

18th century, French

gold, gilt metal, agate, rock crystal

Pleiades, Orion, Ursa Minor. Physique sacrée, ou, Histoire-naturelle de la Bible. 1732.

Internet Archive

Early 18th century book for learning arithmetic and other topics related to science and mathematics, including military engineering and astronomy. Handwritten in the Catalan language in Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city).

The title means "Speculation and theorems of arithmetic", and what's written below it in the cover means "for teaching and doctrine. By Joseph Bolló junior, young grocery shop keeper, who starts this book today the 7th of January of the year 1714".

The book includes mathematical problems related to the job of a grocery shop keeper, but also observations that he saw. A curious page is the one where he draws the meteorite that fell in Southern France on Christmas day of 1704 (the penultimate image in this post). This meteorite was so bright that it was seen from Barcelona, and many texts and drawings from the time describe how people were horrified at seeing this huge ball of fire fall to the Earth. Here is the translation of how Josep Bolló describes it in this page: "Sign of Heaven which, with a great uproar, appeared above on the 25th, Christmas Day, of the year 1705* at 5 in the afternoon. It was a very horrifying thing because the sky was very clear and calm, as well as for the huge noise and shining that it did", and he goes on to explain how it was interpreted as an omen for the bad times that were to come: the War of Spanish Succession, that would end with the terribly cruel Siege of Barcelona that lasted between July 1713 and the 11th of September of 1714 , with Catalonia's defeat and the subsequent military occupation of Catalonia by Castilla/Spain.

*Note: Josep Bolló and many other sources of the time said this meteorite was seen in 1705 instead of 1704 because back then Christmas Day was considered the 1st day of the next year. But, if we call by with our modern calendar, it was the 25th of December of 1704.

The young shop keeper survived both the siege and the horrible political persecution of Catalans that followed it, and he continued writing his book. Some pages show his observations of it, related to mathematics. For example, the last image in this post is a drawing of what a part of Barcelona's wall looked like before the siege and how it looked like after the attack, before being destroyed to build the Citadel, as he wrote in the page.