Gilles-Louis Chrétien, a French musician, was born at Versailles in 1754. In 1787 he invented a machine called a 'physionotrace,' with which he took portraits in profile from life, which were reduced to silhouettes, usually by Fouquet, and then engraved in aquatint

Aquatint

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...

 by himself. Many of them are of great interest on account of the celebrity of the persons represented, 'L'Incorruptible Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...

,' Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau was a French revolutionary, as well as a writer, diplomat, freemason, journalist and French politician at the same time. He was a popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on...

, and Marat

Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...

 being among the hundreds which he produced. Edme Quénedey was at first associated with him, but Chrétien afterwards worked alone. He died in Paris in 1811.