tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post742746435601329625..comments2024-01-26T21:38:25.924-08:00Comments on Duane's PoeTree: Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo writesDuanesPoeTreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post-27514170149622723132017-08-17T13:30:56.640-07:002017-08-17T13:30:56.640-07:00Étienne de Silhouette was the contrôleur général d...Étienne de Silhouette was the contrôleur général des finances in 1759 who was tasked with curbing France's deficit and strengthening its finances during the Seven Years' War against the UK. Expecting a bleak budget for 1760 (an income of 286 million livres against expenses of 503 million livres, including at least 94 million in debt service), while unable to tax the nobility or church, he imposed the "general subvention," (taxes on external signs of wealth such as doors and windows, farms, luxury goods, servants, and profits). He also managed to curtail the royal household expenditure, revise state pensions, and encourage free trade by reducing some taxes while establishing new ones. His austerity programs led the term “à la Silhouette” to be applied to anything made cheaply, especially the shadow “profiles” or “shades” cut from black paper that were in vogue. Less than nine months after taking office he was removed, and in his retirement he became a clever amateur cutter himself. The physionotrace apparatus invented by Gilles-Louis Chrétien in 1783-84 facilitated the production of silhouette portraits by deploying the mechanics of the pantograph to transmit the tracing (via an eyepiece) of the subject's profile silhouette to a needle moving on an engraving plate, from which multiple portrait copies could be printed. August Edouart introduced the term to English after 1814, though he admitted that he was often “regarded with looks as black as the paper of which I made the likenesses.”DuanesPoeTreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.com