Handbill advertising the most celebrated magician of the later part of the 18th century. The Italian Giovanni Giuseppe Pinetti (1750–circa 1803), also known as Joseph Pinetti was the first magician to take advantage of advertising for the theatre, combining a flamboyant personality with the titles of ‘The Professor of Natural Magic’, and ‘Theophrastus Paracelsus’.  His background as a professor in physics in Rome, led him to perform the same experiments he once presented to students as mechanical illusions presented to large audiences.  The height of his fame in the early 1780’s was shortened  in early March 1784, when a lawyer and student of physics Henri Decremps published ‘La Magic Blanche Dévoilée’ (Natural Magic Disclosed). In the book Decremps revealed all of Pinetti’s experiments as mere tricks. Despite the book Pinetti had continued success in England, Prussia and eventually Russia.