Fireworks in the early modern world

People have been celebrating with fireworks for centuries. Significant events, from coronations to victories in battle, marriages to births and baptisms of the rich and famous, have been marked with these evening entertainments. Shakespeare even mentions them near the end of Love’s Labor’s Lost when Don Adriano de Armado lists his options for entertaining the ladies, “the King would have me present the Princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework.“

Looking through the Folger collection, our festival books—which provide an invaluable record of the period’s extravagant public spectacles—include beautiful illustrations of fireworks, while the era’s fast-growing genre of technical manuals include instructions for how to make your own. We share a few below.

Celebrating a coronation

The English merchants of Amsterdam organized and financed this celebration for the coronation of William and Mary of England. Until the end of the 18th century, fireworks were rare and mainly used to display the power and wealth of royalty. Printed depictions were just as important in communicating this political message. As the transience of fireworks makes them difficult to represent, artistic depictions varied, some resembling fountains of water, others raging fires and exploding stars. Schoonebeek has created a rendering full of the movement and unpredictability of pyrotechnics perhaps as impressive as the original show itself.

Adriaan Schoonebeek. Afbeelding… Shouw of bonfires and fireworcks made through the Englisch merchants in Amsterdam on the coronation day of William III and Mary II.  Amsterdam, 1689. Folger ART 236- 026 (size XL). Folger Shakespeare Library.

Honoring the holidays

Beginning in 1471, the papacy sponsored a spectacular fireworks display called the Girandola at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, the papal fortress originally constructed as the mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian. Every year at Easter, on the eve of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 28, and whenever a new pope was elected the fireworks would be staged.

A broadside from 1579 in the Folger collection shows the castle at night. A grand display of fireworks and smoke erupt from three of the castle’s towers.  Blazing barrels are set on the turrets and before the bridge that leads to the building. The sky is filled with sparks. A crowd of people looks on from across the river Tiber. The dedication is set into the base of the image at the center with two blocks of text in latin on either side. This print is dedicated to the young Ludovico Ruytenberch of Utrecht by “Nicolaus van Aelst Bruxellensis.”

Those fireworks can also be seen in a hand-colored print by Louis-Jean Desprez and etched by Francesco Piranesi (son of the more famous Giovanni Battista) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ambrogio Brambilla. Castello S. Angelo di Roma con la girandola. Engraving, 1579. Folger Shakespeare Library. and Louis Jean Desprez. The Girandola at the Castel Sant’Angelo. Etching with hand coloring, n.d. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Feting a royal wedding

Jacques-Francois Blondel’s engraving, in a book produced by the city of Paris, captures the magnificent fireworks on the Seine on August 29, 1739, honoring the marriage of Louise Elizabeth, daughter of Louis XV, to Philip, son of Philip V of Spain. Fanciful sea dragons, boats designed for the occasion, and an island in the river constructed from plans by the architect Giovanni Nicolo Servandoni are brightly illuminated. Along the shore, elegantly attired spectators enjoy the festivities.

Description des Festes Données par la Ville de Paris, a l’Occasion du Mariage de Madame Louise-Elizabeth de France, & de Dom Philippe, Infant & Grand Amiral d’Espagne. Paris, 1740. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Marking the peace

In 1749, an elaborate celebration was created in fashionable St. James’s Park to commemorate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix La Chapelle the year before. An illustration for London Magazine shows the enormous structure, 410 feet long and 114 feet high, called the “fire-work machine” and constructed to create an impressive fireworks display. The engraving shows a music hall, statue of Peace, Neptune, and Mars, and the arcades for the various fireworks. The royal arms appear at top with a large sun firework described as “32 feet in diameter and will burn some hours.” To complete the “sound and music” show, Handel composed his famous Music for the Royal Fireworks.

The color illustration at top from the Victoria and Albert Museum shows a similar event marking the peace concluded at Aix La Chapelle from 1784 outside the Court at the Hague.

A view of the public fireworks to be exhibited on occasion of the general peace concluded at Aix La Chappelle, Octr. 7, 1748. Engraving, 1748. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Making fireworks

Rapid developments in the fields of science and technology during the Renaissance resulted in the growth of technical how-to books, which became a popular way for skilled workers to disseminate information about their trades—from practical instructions for navigation and firefighting to directions for more whimsical (though still highly skilled) crafts such as firework displays. Printing also facilitated the inclusion of detailed illustrations which helped to explain more complex instructions to a broad spectrum of readers who possessed a wide range of reading abilities.

These technical manuals were handy for tradesmen, but also had an aspect of entertainment to them. During times of relative peace, gunner and mathematician John Babington redirected his military skill towards the design and implementation of elaborate fireworks displays, a very popular form of civic entertainment. His manual provides instruction for the manufacture of powder, the structure and placement of explosive devices, and the mathematical formulae needed to ensure the proper trajectory of the pyrotechnics, which are used to illuminate an epic struggle between a horseman and a fire-breathing dragon.

John Babington. Pyrotechnia or, A discourse of artificiall fire-works. London, 1635. Folger Shakespeare Library.

More fireworks manuals in the Folger collection
Francis Malthus, A treatise of artificial fire-vvorks both for vvarres and recreation, 1629  |   John Bate. The mysteryes of nature, and art, 1634