Travelling through time and space in the Age of Enlightenment.
Rare example of a roll of “vues d’optique”, a very particular type of printed images that, during the eighteenth century, were used in Europe for the creation of shows intended for the vast and varied public of the streets and squares, called to participate in a vaguely mysterious atmosphere in a journey of the imagination whose forms and instruments constitute a clear anticipation of the cinematographic show. The sheets, made with an engraving technique and appropriately prepared with carvings, perforations and counter-foundations, depicted biblical episodes, historical facts, landscapes and allegorical subjects and were presented to the public inside optical devices with an extremely simplified structure, mostly wooden boxes equipped with openings or doors that could be opened, lenses and mirrors for refraction and candles to illuminate the images.
Known under the suggestive name of “new world”, these machines were especially popular in Venice, where they were presented first in the squares and then in the living rooms of the upper middle class, mounted on pedestals and carefully painted in refined designs both on the outside, also equipped with a folding panel on which the program of the show was posted, and on the inside, often lined with painted paper with cut-out figures to represent the boxes and the audience of a simulated theater stalls. A simple change of light source allowed a double vision with a fascinating day-night effect. The spectator, who looked out through circular openings placed on the front and/or sides of the new world, was projected into a closed and dark space from which it was possible to access the most diverse and distant realities. The almost initiatory way of accessing the vision and the presence inside the box of artificial lights and mirrors and biconvex lenses, capable of producing surprising effects of transparency and three-dimensionality, had an immediate effect of estrangement from contingent reality and contributed to creating sensations of amazement and excitement in the audience, further stimulated by the words of the barker who, with a system of rollers or cords, made the images slide in the device.
The Casanatense specimen, whose rarity is given both by the excellent state of conservation and by the less usual form of roll of images in loose sheets, comes from Augsburg, a city that shared with Paris, London and Bassano the exclusivity of this type of production. Acquired in a very good state of conservation and therefore subjected to a delicate and minimally invasive restoration, aimed essentially at filling small gaps or tears and strengthening the margins, it measures 31.31 m in length by 0.37 m in height. Originally it was wrapped around a wooden navel covered in wallpaper on whose terminal flap a small sheet of paper was glued bearing the indication of the subjects of the groups of images in sequence.
The set consists of an initial sheet of heavy paper dyed black, on which there is an inscription in Gothic letters surrounded by a frame, both made using the perforation method, and 69 engravings each measuring approximately 275 x 410 mm. Each engraving is surrounded by a border, also in black paper, 40 mm high at the top, 60 mm at the bottom and 55 mm wide on the inside, at the junction of two images. All the engravings are cut flush with the illustrated part and therefore lack a title and indications of the author and publisher, but on the back of each one there is the progressive numbering from 1 to 71 (nos. 57 and 58 are missing) and a caption in German relating to the subject depicted. The captions, written in black ink and apparently all by the same hand, can be traced back to the period in which the roll was assembled, i.e. the second half of the 18th century; the differences that can be seen in some cases in the handwriting can be attributed to different moments of writing, except for the engravings numbered 10, 11, 13, 14, 21, 37 on which there are additions, in a different and apparently later handwriting, written in red chalk to transcribe the title. The colouring of the engravings is in watercolour, in bright tones of red, yellow, blue, green, black and appears very accurate in its execution, with only occasional use of stencils. All the plates are prepared for night viewing by means of carvings, punchings and holes and backed with silk of various colours, in some cases reinforced with brush strokes, and with black netting to simulate grates and bars.
The identification of the places of production and the series to which the prints belong is made problematic by the absolute lack of inscriptions, but the comparison with repertoires and catalogues, as well as with the few examples found complete with margins, allows them to be placed in the German area, more precisely in Augsburg, also considering the recurring presence of images of the city in the sequence. In particular, the direct examination of intact sheets has allowed us to ascertain the provenance from the workshop of the Augsburg publisher Georg Balthasar Probst of the plates marked with the nos. 1-4 (Stories of Adam and Eve), 10-16 (Planets), 17-19 and 23 (from the series of the Wonders of the World), while for both the series dedicated to the city of Turin, composed of 6 engravings (nos. 39-44), and for the five views of Lisbon (nos. 34-38) it must be taken into account that the same subjects recur in the catalogues of the Remondini printing house, a circumstance which is however not probative given the attitude of the Bassano publishers to copying other people’s material.
The subjects represented can be divided into groups, but the various themes do not follow one another according to a logical sequence but are simply placed side by side: for example, the stories of Genesis are followed by the allegories of the senses, the views of European cities precede other biblical stories, without therefore a pre-established order.
The scroll was presented and exhibited to the public in 1995 in an exhibition entitled Vedereviaggiare curated by Iolanda Olivieri and Angela Vicini Mastrangeli.
To learn more:
CATALOGUE – Seeingtraveling: a roll of 18th-century vues d’optique edited by Iolanda Olivieri and Angela Vicini Mastrangeli. Rome, De Luca, 1994