We have analyzed and reconstructed the refractive anamorphic viewer described by J.-F. Niceron in his book, La Perspective Curieuse, which created a sensation in 17th century intellectual circles. We deduced the morphology of one of the polyprisms that he described, and constructed the refractive element in the apparatus. The optical elements of the apparatus were simulated using a ray tracing program to determine the parameters of the viewer so that a working replica could be constructed. The analysis is a good example of the use of mathematics and physics in a problem of art history.
REFERENCES
1.
K.
Andersen
, The Geometry of an Art, The History of The Mathematical Theory of Perspective From Alberti to Monge
(Springer
, New York
, 2007
).2.
J.
Baltrušaitis
, Anamorphic Art
, translated by W. J.
Strachan
(Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.
, Cambridge
, 1977
).3.
J. L.
Hunt
, B. G.
Nickel
, and C.
Gigault
, “Anamorphic images
,” Am. J. Phys.
68
, 232
–237
(2000
).4.
D. S.
Falk
, D. R.
Brill
, and D. G.
Stork
, Seeing the Light
(Harper and Row
, New York
, 1986
), pp. 79
83.5.
D.
Salomon
, Transformations and Projections in Computer Graphics
(Springer-Verlag
, London
, 2006
), pp. 197
–198
.6.
J. F.
Niceron
(1613–1646), La Perspective Curieuse (1638), 2nd ed. (F.
Langlois
, Paris, 1652
).7.
For a brief biography of Niceron see
P.J. S.
Whitmore
, The Order of Minims in Seventeenth-Century France
(Martinus Nijhoff
, The Hague
, 1967
), pp. 155
–162
.8.
Niceron attributed the invention to a Jesuit, Father Charles du Lieu (1609–1678). See Ref. 6
, p. 174
.9.
N.
Malcolm
, Aspects of Hobbes
(Oxford University Press
, New York, 2002
), pp. 200
–233
.10.
Hobbes, in his answer to Sir William Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert. See Ref. 9
, p 202
.11.
Teylers Museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands, has one complete viewer and two other prisms but no pictures to view. The Museum for the History of Science in Florence, Italy has a picture (painted by Niceron) but the viewer was lost in the Arno floods of the 1960s
.12.
Niceron made his own glass and cast it in a mold. The glass was probably a Crown glass with a refractive index no larger than 1.52 because higher index glasses were not produced until the second half of the 17th century
.13.
Freeware available at www.povray.org.
14.
In mid-17th century, France, the common small measure of length was the “pouce
” (thumb). It is about 2.707 cm
.15.
In the text, Niceron particularly makes that point. See Ref. 6
, p. 177
.16.
We have been unsuccessful in finding anyone in Florence who can provide us with a suitable image of the painting that we can work on using POV-Ray. We would welcome help in this respect and also knowing of any other images and/or polyprisms in existence. The only other pictures we know of are some nineteenth century British pictures shown in Georg Füsslin and Ewald Hentze
, Anamorphosen
(Füsslin Verlag, Stuttgart, 1999
), pp. 132
–141
.© 2011 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2011
American Association of Physics Teachers
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