The births of Hercule Florence
February 28, February 29, or March 9, 1804. After all, which date was Hercule Florence’s birth? Here we explain the saga to find the real birthday of this traveling artist.
Hercule Florence had just turned twenty when he embarked in Toulon on the frigate Marie Thérèse for a voyage of circumnavigation. After 48 days at sea, he landed in Rio de Janeiro. The story that follows, of the Langsdorff Expedition, of his works and the invention of the photographic process many already know. However, before that? Moreover, if we went back to the year 1804, when Hercule was born, what would we uncover? That the French-Monegasque apparently has at least three dates of birth, one of them being the result of customs from other times, and the other due to a misreading of his birth certificate.
In the manuscript L’Ami des Arts livré à lui-même, written between 1837 and 1859 as an illustrated compendium of his life and work and published in 2018 by the institute that bears his name, Hercule Florence describes his childhood briefly and states his birth to be February 29. On page 175 he writes, “I was born on February 29, 1804, in Nice, a city in the Maritime Alps, so well known for its beautiful climate and its orange trees.”
In the biography Hercule Florence (1900), Estevam Leão Borroul (1859 - 1914), his biographer also states, on page 4, that the traveling artist was born on February 29, 1804.
“In Nice, capital (chef-lieu) of the Alpes-Maritimes department, on February 29, 1804, the same year when Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French, crowned and consecrated by Pope Pius VII, and when the Order of the Legion of Honor was created - Hercules Florence was born...”
As early as 2006, the former Radio Monte-Carlo journalist, freelance reporter, and writer William Luret published an article entitled De Monaco au Bresil: Hercule Florence, voyageur et inventeur oublié (From Monaco to Brazil: Hercule Florence, a forgotten traveler and inventor) in the 30th issue of the Annales Monegasques - Revue D’Histoire de Monaco. In it, Luret points out that Hercule Florence had made a mistake when he wrote down in his diary the date of his birth. According to the writer, Hercule had most likely miscalculated when converting the Republican calendar, created by the French National Convention in 1792, during the Revolutionary period and used until 1806, to symbolize the rupture with the old order and the beginning of a new era in the history of France and the Renaissance.
“His birth certificate mentions that Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence was born in Nice, on the eighteenth windy [last month of winter] year XII, two hours after midnight... In his diary, Hercule Florence claims he was born on February 29, 1804. In reality, this is an error, for upon checking the conversion tables of the Republican calendar in force during the Revolution, he actually came into the world on March 9, 1804.”
For Thierry Thomas, a Belgian historian who has delved into Florence’s life and work, the artist may have not been mistaken. “Hercule, in fact, is not totally wrong. Many people in the past, considered the day of baptism as the day of birth. It could also be that he only consulted the baptismal register and not the birth register,” he says.
Up to here, we had, then, two dates of birth: February 29, noted by Hercule in his diary and by Bourroul in his biography, and March 9, pointed out by Luret in his article.
However, Luret did not pay attention to the fact that Hercule Florence was baptized on February 29, so there is no way he could have been born on March 9. “In 2010, when I arrived at the IHF, I read the copy of the document that Luret used to determine this date. It was the copy of the official act of birth of Nice. There was something written on it that Luret read as ‘Dix Huit Ventôse de l’an XII’. Eighteen Windy Year Twelfth is the equivalent of March 9, 1804,” explains Thierry.
A few years later, when starting his online research in Nice, Thierry finds proof of what he assumed: there was a reading error. “Actually, it is not written ‘Dix Huit...’, but ‘Du Huit Ventôse...’. Therefore, Luret read ‘Dix Huit’ (eighteen) instead of reading ‘Du Huit’ (eight). In the official text of the act of birth, it is written ‘né à Nice ce matin à deux heures après minuit’,” adds the Belgian historian.
The official birth document reads:
“From the 8th Windy Day (Du Huit Ventôse), year 12 of the French Republic.
Birth certificate of Romuald Florence, born in Nice this morning, two hours after midnight, son of Arna[ud] Florence, a high school drawing teacher living in rue la raison, and Augustine Vignali...”
Du Huit Ventôse when converted to the current calendar confirms that Hercule Florence's date of birth is February 28, 1804. Nevertheless, his baptism took place on February 29, as shown in the following documents.
While researching Florence’s life in the country where he spent his childhood, historian Thomas Fouilleron, who specializes in the history of Monaco, substantiates Thierry’s discovery. In his long article titled Quitter son pays. Monaco en 1823 and published in the catalog of the exhibition Hercule Florence: Le Nouveau Robinson, held in 2017 at the Nouveau Musée National Monaco, Fouilleron states, after having accessed the documents, that Hercule Florence’s birth certificate is dated as 8 Ventôse an XII (February 28, 1804). Moreover, he was registered only as Romuald, having received his full name - Antoine Hercule Romuald - only the next day, February 29, at his baptism.
Hercule’s life may have begun there, in Nice, on February 28, 1804. From there he went to Monaco, and finally to Brazil, where he settled as a traveler, a painter, a draftsman, an inventor, a farmer, a teacher... With so many lives and so many talents, could Hercule Florence have had only one birth date?
Tags: hercule florence
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A short chronology of Hercule Florence’s photographic process
On World Photography Day, we selected some of the first records of Hercule Florence, the precursor of photography. Check out what the artist, traveler, and inventor recorded about his most celebrated invention
