From the moment François Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes flew over Paris in the first human flight in a hot air balloon in 1783 to Louis Bleriot’s 1909 flight across the English Channel, the quest to send human beings skyward was a French national obsession.

Whether this picture was intended as a playful work of art or an illustration of a seriously practicable design is unclear. But it is so charmingly and skilfully rendered (painted on glass from the back the colours radiate) that one feels it’s almost bound to work.