Snuff Box with a Group Portrait of Voltaire, Rousseau and Franklin, after 1790

In accordance with a contemporary fashion, numerous miniatures of Benjamin Franklin were circulated. Such portraits found multiple uses, and could even adorn the lid of a snuff box. The example chosen here seems to anticipate current forms of merchandising. Franklin is united with Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in a triumvirate of Enlightened thinkers and freedom fighters. Because the writing surrounding the group portrait gives Franklin's date of death, the box must date from after 1790.

Snuff box with a group portrait of Voltaire, Rousseau and Franklin, horn, satinwood, gilt frame, paper and glass, 2.5 cm x 7.5 cm, without date [after 1790], unknown artist; source: with the kind permission of the Collection of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania, http://www.pagrandlodge.org/ Philadelphia, Pa.; photograph of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary: www.benfranklin300.org.