PHILIPPE FRANCOIS BELLANGER DIT L'AVEUGLE DU BONHEUR, AGE DE 55 ANS NATIF DE PARIS [caption title]

[S.l.: S.n.], [1805]. Broadside. Near fine. Engraving, 9 x 7 1/8 inches (plate area). In French. Faint early folds, very faint foxing in lower margin. Near fine.

Portrait engraving of Philippe-François Bellanger, the "Lucky Blind Man," "drawn from life at the Conciergerie on the day of his ordeal." Bellanger (ca. 1740-1805) was a Parisian pyrothechnician who lost his sight detonating fireworks. He moved to the Quinze-Vingts hospital for the blind and soon became widely known as a bird trainer and vendor of French National Lottery tickets.

At Quinze-Vingts, Bellanger became deeply attached to a young widow named Fanchette whom he (truncated) had hired to care for him. When Fanchette began receiving marriage proposals from a young curiosities seller named Pinson, Bellanger became enraged at both the couple and Pinson's blind aunt, who supported their engagement, and he began plotting their murder.

On February 25, 1805, Bellanger visited Fanchette and Pinson's aunt in the latter's room and sent Fanchette to buy brandy. While she was gone, he placed a log he had secretly brought with him in the blind woman's stove and excused himself upon Fanchette's return. When Pinson arrived 15 minutes later, the room had begun to fill with a dark smoke, and the three noticed the log, removed it from the stove, and discovered that it had been hollowed out and filled with filled with gunpowder, a fireworks component, three bullets, iron nuts, and a Quinze-Vingts uniform button.

The log and various exclamations Bellanger had made in the weeks leading up to the events provided more than enough evidence to convict him of attempted murder, and he was sentenced to death by guillotine at the Conciergerie on June 28, 1805. Bellanger's portrait was drawn on this date, and versions of the present engraving based on it were quickly distributed throughout France and beyond. The engraving features the central portrait of Bellanger surrounded by six illustrations, including four scenes from his life (among which are the moment he lost his sight and his fashioning of the explosive log device), and explanations below.

This example of the engraving contains a plate number, "No. VI," indicating that it was most likely removed from the 1805 fifteenth volume of the German periodical LONDON UND PARIS, the only other appearance of the print bearing that number that we have located. (Inventory #: 764)