Existing comment:
GIOVANNI FRANCESCO COSTA
Venetian, 1711 - 1773
Scholars Consulting Books and a Globe
C. 1747
etching, hand-colored with watercolor and gouache
New Century Fund, 2014
This is one of a series of anamorphoses - distorted images that are intelligible only when seen reflected in a cylindrical mirror. An architect and leading scenographer in mid-eighteenth-century Venice, Costa pursued related theoretical interests, publishing a treatise on perspective. The etchings in this series represent a playful application of that study. Here two old men are stooped over tomes, one a book of geometric figures, with the drawing instruments beside it - a pun on the act of creating and viewing such images. |