Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies

Cinema of the Enlightenment

Brancion Laurence de

Louis de Carmontelle was an eighteenth-century French draftsman, painter, and garden designer. In 1783, he began painting a series of panoramas on translucent paper that, when cranked through a backlit viewing box gave viewers the experience of journeying through beautiful landscapes. Drawing from both museum and private collections, "Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies", re-creates the original viewing experience by leading the reader through a series of full-colour scenes and two stunning panoramic gatefolds, and in the process offers a lively analysis of eighteenth-century life and a rare glimpse into the very beginnings of the moving image.

About the Author

Laurence de Brancion is a successful author of several art related books.

Reviews

"This is the only publication in the English language that reproduces so well and so exhaustively the visual marvels of these transparencies... [making] them visible outside the private spheres to which so many of them have long belonged" – Eighteenth-Century Life

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