Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies

"Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, was an eighteenth-century French painter, art critic, garden designer, and man of the theater. In 1783 he began painting a series of panoramic landscapes on translucent paper that became a popular source of entertainment at French royal court gatherings. These rolled-up transparencies (rouleaux transparents) were cranked through a backlit viewing box while Camontelle told stories about what was happening in the scenes." "The author of this book re-creates the original viewing experience of the guests by taking the reader on a virtual stroll through a series of these painted landscapes and, in the process, offers a lively analysis of social live in France during the late 1700s. The book presents all of Carmontelle's extant transparencies, some of which survive only in fragments, and a number of which have never before been published."--Jacket.