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| Diorama.
Louis Daguerre. 1837. |
"...March 8, 1839. Louis Daguerre, a French painter and
inventor, for some seventeen years had been the proprietor
of one of the most popular spectacles in Paris. It was a
theatre of illusions called the Diorama.
"No actors performed in Daguerre's Diorama theatre.
It consisted of a revolving floor that presented views of
three stages. On each stage was an enormous canvas (72'x
48') with scenes painted on both sides. Through the
clever play of light, Daguerre could make one scene
dissolve into another. Parisians were treated to the sight
of an Alpine village before and after an avalanche, or
Midnight Mass from inside and outside the cathedral,
accompanied by candles and the smell of incense."
Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America (New York,
Dover, 1976
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