Une anamorphose revelee par le langage des doigts chez Simon Vouet
An anamorphosis revealed by the language of the fingers at Simon Vouet

Summary/Abstract: We know that the catoptromancy concerns all the techniques of divination by reflective surfaces. Well, in his Perspective curieuse from 1638, Jean-François Nicéron regrets that, in some cases, the prodigious effects of the catoptrics are used in abusive way inside such practices. Based on mathematic principles of perspective, this illusionist art tries to give a signification to an informal representation, in the aim to reconstruct the deliberately distort image, by means of a phantomlike reflection. When, in the end of his Italian period, French painter Simon Vouet realizes a sanguine drawing, representing a catoptric device, he becomes the ambassador of a recent technologic invention, fascinating curious personalities of this epoch. For organize this scene of conjuring, the painter deploys a group of height satyrs with a very accurate and revelatory gesture’s language, including signs like indico and comput digitis. In that way, the functioning of the machine is explained and conducts to a reflection about the mise en abyme of images and about the effects of the mimesis phantastiké, revealing the true aspect of reality.

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