The diorama by Louis Jacques Daguerre was an invention that showed people the concept of illusion within a painting. The definition of the diorama was considered both to be a picture that was painted on translucent material that allowed light to shine through and three-dimensional setting in which models were situated against a backdrop. The first part of this essay looked at the first definition for the majority, and only slotted a paragraph to the latter. The Origins of the diorama, the inspiration, the inventor, the methods, and the antecedents were the focus of this essay.
The closest antecedent to the diorama was the diaphanorama, invented by the landscape and genre artist (he also painted scenes for theater plays) called Franz Niklaus König. In 1815 he showed eight transparent paintings, which were “…painted in water-colour paper, and were shown in a darkened room by transmitted and reflected light, various degrees of transparency being achieved by oiling and partly scraping away the back of the paper.” This meant that Franz would paint the picture that he wanted to display (on light, thin paper), and he would oil and the scrape the back of the painting off (to let the light shine through, which transformed the look of the painting). This was a new process of presenting an image to an audience.
Louis Jacques Daguerre was first a stage designer (one of many pursuits that he accomplished) at the Théâtre Ambigu-Comique. This job had a great impact on Daguerre’s knowledge of the placement and lighting of objects to make them seem realistic (as it influenced Franz and the antecedent to the diorama, the diaphanorama). The main influence that working in the theater had on him was in the method of lighting the stage. Daguerre mastered the technique of lighting the stage, he was able to change the it in accordance to the time of day that the play needed (using only oil lanterns), in one play titled the Le Songe he cast the stage in moonlight that was...