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À partir d’une vingtaine de gravures de feux d’artifice urbains (1655-1701), cet article analyse les choix visuels, les conditions de production, les réceptions fluctuantes et les usages politiques parfois troublés de ces estampes constitutives de la culture festive d’Ancien Régime. Combinant le spectaculaire, le scripturaire et l’iconographie, le feu d’artifice est à concevoir comme un agencement intermédial, auquel la gravure, excédant le statut de seule illustration ou de simple ornement, participe pleinement, selon des modalités multiples et évolutives.

Considering twenty engravings of urban fireworks (1655-1701), this article sets out to analyse the conditions of production and the changing reception of these etchings, as well as the visual choices that animate them and the sometimes ambiguous political usages to which they were subject. Fireworks combined elements of the spectacular, the scriptural, and the iconographic, generating a kind of intermedial assemblage; these engravings took part fully in that intermediality, exceeding the function of mere illustration or simple ornament, and operating in multiple, changing, modes.