François Dominique Séraphin (15 February 1747 – 5 December 1800) was a French entertainer who developed and popularised

shadow play Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures (shadow puppets) which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. The cut-ou ...

s in France. The art form would go on to be copied across Europe.

Shadow plays

Séraphin was born in Longwy, near Luxembourg. The art of using shadows to form figures onto a screen can be traced back to 9th-century Indonesia and China. European travellers saw these "Ombres Chinoises" (Chinese shadows) and returned home with descriptions of their performance. Séraphin introduced his version of the act at the back of a

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, ...

inn during the early 1770s. Though he started the show in humble beginnings they became such a success, including regular visits from the aristocracy, that Séraphin would go on to perform at the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

in front of royalty. In 1784 Séraphin moved to Paris, performing his shows at the newly opened

Palais-Royal The Palais-Royal () is a former royal palace located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, it was built for Cardinal R ...

from 8 September 1784. During this time

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...

visited three of his plays. The performances would continue through the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

. Séraphin died in 1800 but his shows continued initially under the direction of his nephew until the theatre closed in 1870. Séraphin had adapted the Ombres Chinoises and devised new methods to control the shadow-throwing puppets. Rather than use hidden performers moving the parts of the silhouetted puppets, Séraphin developed the use of

clockwork Clockwork refers to the inner workings of either mechanical devices called clocks and watches (where it is also called the movement) or other mechanisms that work similarly, using a series of gears driven by a spring or weight. A clockwork mech ...

mechanisms to automate the show. He made a variety of devices and performed several different acts including "Le Chasse aux canards" (The Duck Hunt), "Le Magicien Rothomago" (Rothomago the Magician), and "L'Embarras du ménage" (The Embarrassment of the Household). Amongst Séraphin's most popular works was ''Le Pont Cassé'' (The Broken Bridge), a play based on a musical piece by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain. At the height of popularity the most famous of Séraphin's shadow plays were reproduced so that children could perform them. Script details and paper versions of the characters were made in

Épinal Épinal (; german: Spinal) is a commune in northeastern France and the prefecture of the Vosges department. Geography The commune has a land area of . It is situated on the river Moselle, south of Nancy. Épinal station has rail connecti ...

, Nancy, and

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...

. Children would stick the characters to cardboard and cut them out, performing their own versions of the stories in small toy theatres. Séraphin is seen as the most important figure in the development of the art form. His work is believed to have been seen by

Philip James de Loutherbourg Philip James de Loutherbourg RA (31 October 174011 March 1812), whose name is sometimes given in the French form of Philippe-Jacques, the German form of Philipp Jakob, or with the English-language epithet of the Younger, was a French-born Briti ...

, giving him inspiration for his mechanical work including the '' Eidophusikon''. Techniques used to create the shadow plays were also replicated and combined with other emerging technologies, including

magic lantern The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...

s, to form

phantasmagoria Phantasmagoria (, also fantasmagorie, fantasmagoria) was a form of horror theatre that (among other techniques) used one or more magic lanterns to project frightening images, such as skeletons, demons, and ghosts, onto walls, smoke, or sem ...

shows. He died in Paris.

References

Bibliography

* Edmond-Denis De Manne, Charles Ménétrier : ''Galerie historique des comédiens de la troupe de Nicolet: notices sur certains acteurs et mimes qui se sont fait un nom dans les annales des scènes secondaires depuis 1760 jusqu'à nos jours'' N. Scheuring, 1869 -

External links

le Théâtre des Ombres

o
arcane-magazine.com

''Le Pont Cassé''
on YouTube. {{DEFAULTSORT:Seraphin, Francois Dominique 1747 births 1800 deaths People from Longwy French performance artists French puppeteers