Circle of Pierre-Jacques Volaire

Firework displays or girandole (the name taken from the revolving wheel from which rockets were fired) were staged every year in Rome from the Castel Sant’ Angelo, normally to celebrate Easter Monday and the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (29th June). More rarely, there were firework displays in honour of the inauguration of a new Pope: Joseph Wright of Derby, who was in Rome in mid-February 1775, was able to witness those in honour of the new Pope Pius VI. Grand Tourists also remained astonished at the ingenuity of the girandola and Robert Adam, writing from Rome in June 1755, explained how it “…exceeded for beauty, invention and grandeur anything I had ever seen…” and again “…the grandest part…being thousands of rockets which were sent up one at a time, which spread out like a wheat sheaf in the air, each one of which gives a crack and sends out a dozen burning balls like stars, which fall gently downwards till they die out” (J. Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle, in Edinburgh and Rome, London 1962, p. 177).

The scenographic potential of such a spectacular sight obviously appealed to artists for the scene is quite often represented in late 18th- and early 19th-century paintings: examples include Joseph Wright of Derby's painting in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (reproduced in colour in J. Egerton, Joseph Wright of Derby, exh. cat., London, Tate Gallery, 7 February - 22 April 1990, pp. 172-3, cat. no. 104) or his painting of circa 1774-5 in Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, where St. Peter's Basilica is also illuminated in the distance (reproduced in colour in J. Garms, Vedute di Roma. Dal Medioevo all'Ottocento, Naples 1995, vol. I, p. 105, no. 100); a painting by Jean-Charles-Joseph Rémond (1795-1875) formerly with Galleria Megna, Rome (reproduced in L. Salerno, I pittori di vedute in Italia (1580-1830), Rome 1991, p. 430, no. S.98); and numerous temperas by Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866), who specialised in painting this event (see, for example, his signed tempera sold in Milan, Sotheby's, 12-13 November 2003, lot 180). The fireworks are known to have taken place as early as 1602 for an anonymous engraving of that date shows "Castello S. Angelo con la Girandola" (reproduced in J. Garms, op. cit., vol. II, p. 56, no. B2).