The Ascension of Francesco

Long before Montague Watersby took to the skies in his rattling biplane, he was captivated by a most curious fellow: Francesco Lana de Terzi, a 17th-century dreamer who imagined a ship borne aloft by four vast copper spheres, evacuated of air, and thus lighter than it. A splendid idea, save for one small flaw: the copper would have crumpled like a week-old crumpet under the pressure of the heavens.

Nevertheless, Monty often claimed that it was Signor de Lana’s audacious contraption that first set his imagination climbing skyward. Proof, perhaps, that folly and genius are separated only by altitude.

In this piece, The Ascension of Francesco, golden orbs rise amidst blushing clouds and celestial chatter, carrying the spirit of impossible invention ever upward. The central relic, an original Wills’s Cigarette card, commemorates the dream itself: that one might simply think upward hard enough to defy gravity.

A toast, then, to Francesco, the patron saint of impractical aviators, and the spark behind Monty’s lifelong love affair with the sky.