Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies: Cinema of the Enlightement

Louis de Carmontelle was an eighteenth-century French draftsman, painter, and garden designer. Beginning in 1783 he painted a series of panoramas on translucent paper that became a popular source of entertainment at royal court gatherings. These rolled-up transparencies (rouleaux transparents) were cranked through a backlit viewing box, and the “moving pictures” were accompanied by live storytelling that gave spectators the experience of journeying through beautiful landscapes.

Presented chr...