Illustrated by the artist Lucien Fontanarosa and engraved by Robert Armanelli and Claude Durrens, the note depicts Pascal with his head resting on one hand, against a backdrop of religious buildings. On the front, the present-day Saint-Jacques Tower (actually the bell tower of the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie) and the church of Notre-Dame-de-Prospérité in Clermont-Ferrand, Pascal's birthplace, appear in the background. The reverse features the same portrait of Pascal, with the dovecote and chapel of Port-Royal Abbey in the background. It would therefore seem that the Banque de France chose to portray Pascal primarily as the Jansenist philosopher rather than as the scientist whose ideas were so brilliant in mathematics, hydrostatics and acoustics alike.
The only allusion to Pascal's scientific research is Saint-Jacques Tower, from the top of which he conducted his experiments on the weight of air in October 1648, helping to establish the concept of atmospheric pressure.
