Existing comment:
Anamorphosis
after 1700
German
The creation of this distorted watercolor, which translates into a rectified image in the cylindrical mirror, required a complex series of geometric calculations. The drawing is one of thirteen recorded in a 1765 inventory of the optics room at the court of Hesse-Kassel. Optical tricks like these speak to the playful and often bizarre aspects of Renaissance and Baroque science. |