Talk:Anamorphosis

message: I have requested a cite for the claim that catoptric anamorphosis, and the mirrors used to view it, originated in China prior to the 16th century. This claim seems rather dubious to me for several reasons:
# Upon Googling, nearly every similar claim is either a quote of this article, or a very vague, unreferenced statement (which may well be based on this article);
# Pages which actually give references about the history of anamorphosis all state that the earliest known example of perspective anamorphosis was created by Leonardo da Vinci, in Italy, in the late 15th or early 16th century; while the earliest catoptric anamorphosis was created in the 17th century (in 1630, French scientist Jean-Louis Sieur de Vaulezard published a detailed technical treatise on how such images might be created, and the cylindrical anamorphism Saint Jerome Praying (unknown Caravaggisto) dates to 1635.) Indeed our own article also makes that claim, in apparent contradiction to its anamorphoscope claim;
# Of course, these claims are not strictly contradictory; they could mean that the artistic technique was invented in Italy, but the device for viewing them was invented prior to that in China. However, that would make absolutely no sense;
# It is generally accepted that high reflectivity glass mirrors of controllable shape, as mirrors are understood today, were invented in Italy in the 16th century, and were first imported to China (where they supplanted locally produced flat bronze mirrors) from the Qing dynasty onward (i.e. mid 17th century.) This not only happens to coincide pretty closely with the earliest known examples of anamorphic art but — if correct — means it is quite impossible for the Chinese to provide these special mirrors to Italy because in fact they did not know how to make them at the time, whereas the Venetians did; and
# The development of the earliest known pieces of perspective anamorphic art happens to coincide closely with the development of specifically geometric theories of perspective by 15th and 16th century Italian artists — a very logical and obvious progression. It is possible, but not proven, that the use of mirror based systems as aids to perspective drawing (e.g. camera obscura) began around the same time as the earliest catoptric anamorphosis. (See, e.g. the Hockney-Falco thesis; its 15th and 16th century claims are quite controversial but there is wide support for the claim that this was done in the 17th century.) So far as I am aware, the Chinese did not develop either a geometric theory of perspective nor optical aids to perspective drawing (although the Chinese, Europeans and Arabs were aware of the camera obscura for centuries before it was used in art by Europeans.) So in both cases, if the anamorphosis originated in the West, then it simply consisted in experimental misuse of techniques known to have been available and probably in widespread use at the time, by "de-tuning" them so they produced distorted rather than naturalistic effects.
I could be wrong. As unlikely as it seems, a single example of Chinese catoptric anamorphic art that is positively dated to earlier than the 16th century (or, in fact, earlier than the 17th century) would prove the claim. But I cannot find any such reference.
-- Securiger (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese ? 

message: This looks like a painting on a canvas viewed from the perspective you would normally view a canvas. Can the article explain how the painting is different? Other than having the illusion of windows it looks to be only a mural, and otherwise unspectacular in terms of being a painting. --04:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Church of St. Ignazio. Anamorph? 

message: I think the wrong installation is being mentioned in the section for contemporary artists, but I'm not sure if I've found any sources reputable enough to cite in the article.
It seems that "3 ellipses for 3 locks" was created in Cardiff in 2007 -- as referenced in this Wikimedia image  and on the artist's own site here.
The installation in Hasselt that is painted onto 99 buildings is called "Trois ellipses ouvertes en désordre" (translated to "Three open ellipses in disorder") according to this contemporaneous article which matches what's on the artist's site. Scdinan (talk) 13:39, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of Varini's work in Hasselt