(GARNERIN, Élisa). ~ Esatta descrizione del globo e paracadute dell’aeronauta madamigella Elisa Garnérin in occasione del suo volo eseguito in Padova nell’ anno M. DCCC. XXV. Padua: [N. Zanon Bettoni e Compagni for] Fratelli Gamba [Tipografia Minerva, cover imprint], 1825.
8vo (210 × 135 mm), pp. 7, [1], plus engraved aquatint physionotrace portrait by Bouchardy and a folding engraved plate depicting Garnerin’s balloon and parchute. Original printed blue wrappers preserved in a later limp mottled calf binding, early ownership inscription (partly erased) to the original upper wrapper, early 20th-century inscriptions to the endpapers of the later binding. A good copy.
First edition of this souvenir account of a balloon ascent and parachute descent made by the pioneering French aeronaut, Élisa Garnerin, in Italy. An early pioneer of parachuting, Élisa had already made numerous drops in Paris and further afield in France, her performances often attracting enormous crowds. More than any other contemporary woman, it might be said without undue irony that her career was one of ups and downs — her celebrity as a balloonist and parachutist met with considerable opposition from the police, who found the crowds she drew to be troublesome, and her business probity was frequently questioned by her associates.
The illustrations in this pamphlet include a version of her circular portrait by Bouchardy made in Paris using the physionotrace apparatus invented by Gille-Louis Chrétien designed to copy physical features and simultaneously reduce them to an engraved plate. The folding plate shows Élisa borne aloft in an elegant gondola beneath her balloon, and then the gondola released from the balloon for her parachute descent.