How a Machine Became a Metaphor
The guillotine in history and culture
For the last installment of our series on the art and material culture of the French Revolution, I wanted to look at depictions of the machine that has come to define it in so many ways — the guillotine. Hope you like it!
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Nicolas Jacques Pelletier would almost certainly be lost to history if he had died another way. It seems like he was a common criminal. It’s not even totally clear what his transgressions were, but robbery and assault are a good bet. He was convicted of his crimes on New Year’s Eve, 1791. The sentence was death.
But what kind of death? Capital punishment was common in early modern France, and executions were always carried out in public. An execution was considered by many to be an enjoyable afternoon out, as you can see in this 1720 engraving from the Netherlands:
But the specific fate of a condemned criminal depended on his or her status. Most o…
