The poisoner Derues is put to the torture before his execution in 1777
The poisoner Derues is put to the torture before his execution in 1777 Derues and the ritual of execution The execution of Derues was accompanied by an unprecedented outpouring of images. According to Grimm, portraits of Derues and scenes from his crime and trial, "of marvellous exactitude", were produced everywhere and purveyors of engravings sold nothing else for a fortnight. The following are mostly from a series of thirty-nine prints offered by the engravers Esnauts et Rapilly, to accompanied the extremely popular Vie privée et criminelle d'Antoine-François Derues by the bookseller Cailleau. Among them are some of the most striking images of the final years of "the age of spectacular execution". Cailleau's work sought to portray Derues as a monster of hypocrisy and crime; but paradoxically, the illustrations seem (and probably seemed at the time) more an indictment of the cruelties of 18th-century capital punishment. They stand as testimony ...