Cristina del Rosso: Anamorpho.. what?

Scrots, Portrait of Prince Edward VI, 1563 (Image: Wikipedia)

Yes, anamorphosis.

You see it now and then; you just don’t know that that’s its name. You see it, for example, in the advertisements in football fields or basket courts.

Beever, Swimming Pool in High Street
(Image: J.Beever)

What’s an anamorphosis? It’s a distorted image, that makes it look like we are pulling from it as a rope would do. Or deforming it by widening it. There are several kinds: conical, cylindrical, spherical. They all have the same trick: if you look at them from a definite spot, they go back to normality. It’s an optic game, a well found perspective trick. An optical illusion in which geometry deceives our brain.

Beever, Swimming Pool in High Street, opposite side
(Image: J. Beever)

In lineal perspective, about which we havealready talked, objects get smaller with distance, towards the vanishing point. In anamorphosis it happens the other way around: objects get bigger, and that’s why it seems they rise from the floor. It consists an inverted vanishing point, which direction is toward to the viewers, with inverted proportions. We can also play with depth: for this effect, we should use the projection of existing straight lines or another reference from the surroundings.

Beever, Batman and Robin to the rescue
(Image: J.Beever)

To build it, we should take into account the distance to the vanishing point, the position of the viewer and the height of our eyes. Generally, a large space is needed (some need up to 7 m) and that’s why it is a kind of drawing that suits urban artists perfectly. (To mention some: Julian Beever, Eduardo Relero or Kurt Wenner.) They work either with chalk or pastel, which makes them risk losing their work if it rains. A detail they take into account is the presence of shadows of street lamps, trees or street furniture, since these would distort the three dimensional effect caused by anamorphosis.

García Hidalgo, 1693 (Image:
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica)

Probably, anamorphosis was born to adjust the paintings on arched ceilings to the viewer’s eye, in order to solve this architectural issue. It’s not weird, then, to see this topic coming up in architecture treatises. Leonardo (how not) already was looking for a solution to this issue. As an example, here you’ve got a drawing by José García Hidalgo, in which he tries to improve the view of a crucifix that would be painted at a considerable height.

The most brilliant one is, undoubtedly, Andrea Pozzo: in Sant’Ignazio Church (Rome) he painted the ceiling like it was immaterial, like it was sky above our heads.

Pozzo, Painted Ceiling of Church St. Ignazio, 1690

Pozzo, Dome at St. Ignazio, 1685

He is also the author of this dome that is not a dome: it’s painted on a flat surface. (There was no money left to build it and he offered to paint a fake one).

Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533

The most famous one is clearly Holbein the Younger’s “The Ambassadors”. It was going to be placed over a door or a stair, so that when somebody would, while passing by, see the real figure, a skull, as reminder of death and our quick stay on this world.

Anamorphosis of "The Ambassadors"
(Image: Wikipedia)

Just to mention some more artists: William Scrots o Erhard Schön. Also, Prince Edward VI of Scrots’ portrait is well known (1546), with a long nose in a landscape. If you look at the right border, the head goes back to its original shape. It seems he painted it for the Prince’s entertainment.

I’m sure that, after having read this, you won’t watch football in the same way!