Satyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an Elephant

Satyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an Elephant

Hans Troschel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving, originally pasted onto the so-called Vouet Scrapbook (inv. 45.97, fol. 78), is based on a drawing (Hessisches Landesmuseum–Graphische Sammlung, Darmstadt) by the great virtuoso painter and draftsman Simon Vouet, who was deeply interested in this particular form of anamorphosis, know as catoptric. Set in a pastoral landscape, the scene depicts a group of astonished satyrs observing a cylindrical mirror—a primitive culture before it was enlightened by science. The distorted, unreadable drawing is revealed to be the image of an elephant when clarified in the reflection of the cylindrical mirror. Vouet’s design originally served as a frontispiece for the second edition of Jean Fraçois Niceron’s "La Perspective curieuse" published in Paris in 1652, which was the most famous treatise on anamorphosis. The Museum owns the first edition of Niceron’s treatise, inv. 41.100.450(2).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Satyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an ElephantSatyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an ElephantSatyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an ElephantSatyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an ElephantSatyrs Admiring the Anamorphosis of an Elephant

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.