Rod Bantjes, “MNC-M01034_Image_1.html,” created 14 March, 2026; last modified, 27 March, 2026 (https://people.stfx.ca/rbantjes/).
|
This is one of the vues d'optique that came with this box. It is a collage. Most of the figures are cut from other engravings and assembled here. Gold leaf is glued over the windows and a thin silvered metal over the mirrors.
At the centre is a showman exhibiting an optical machine indoors in the way that #MNC-M01034 probably was. The grotesque figures on the right are reproduced as part of the decor in the Museo del Precinema in Padua. It would be interesting to know what their 18th-century meaning was.