Panorama magic lantern slides

Manufacturer	unknown
Title	[Land and naval battle] [Characters]
Date	Last quarter of the 18th century
Donation	Carles Gomis Aixelà
Register	03427-10

Glass slides with painted images to be projected on a screen with the magic lantern. These interesting slides from the late eighteenth century are an example of the iconographic diversity of magic lantern projections: one depicts the scene of a battle and the other the caricature of various characters. These types of elongated slides were projected onto the screen slowly by passing them in front of the lighted focus. The result was like a kind of travelling shot in today's cinematic language. The production of glass slides was completely handmade until mechanical procedures for manufacturing them began to be introduced, starting in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Until then, the images were painted entirely by hand, which required a very careful technique, since small errors in drawing were magnified when projected on the screen. Another drawback was finding the right transparency of colours. Thick paints were needed, with little pigmentation and at the same time resistant to the bright and hot ray of the lantern. Most hand-painted glass slides were protected with wooden frames, which made handling easier.

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