The anamorphosis

Version 2, May 2011 (Former version with same text was originally published on artborder.com. That site is now deleted).

An anamorphosis is a distorted picture of perspective, which does not seem normal until it is seen from a specific visual angle. Generally anamorphosis are separated into different groups – usually two groups. At first there are the optical – also called direct or oblique – anamorphosis, which can be seen directly from a specific point of view without any kind of assisting apparatus. For the second there are the so-called catoptric anamorphosis, often called mirror anamorphosis. The latter have to be viewed by the assistance of a mirror of some kind, most often cylinder or cone shaped. According to Jurgis Baltrusaitis – the author of the legendary book Anamorphic Art – the very name anamorphosis does not appear until the 17th Century, but the name was fixed to a phenomenon already known. In Leonardo da Vinci\’s Codex Atlanticus (1483-1518), the oldest known examples of anamorphosis is to be found, but it was only in the 16th Century that the skill was spread seriously.

In the 17th Century the anamorphosis had a revival (note 1). The anamorphosis belongs to the mathematical science of perspective. This science developed in Italy on the threshold of the renaissance (about 1420), when it became a tool for the artists. With the help of the new skill they could (practically) transform the three-dimensional world into two dimensions in a very rational manner – and the correctness could be tested. The picture space of the early renaissance was constructed in accordance with a strict frontal view, and first little by little the artists succeeded in constructing more advanced perspectives. But the most important aspect of the discovery of perspective was probably, that the artists at home in their studios fictively could construct an expiration of space in their pictures. In spite of everything the method had its limitations. It demanded that the distance between eye and picture plane was sufficiently large. If it was not, the picture became distorted or deranged. Marianne Marcussen and Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen give the following description of the anamorphosis: In fact, in its original form the anamorphosis is identical with a rendering of linear perspective, constructed with a very short distance between picture plane and eye. (Note 2) . It turned out however, that the problem could be reinterpreted. In stead of being a problem the distortion became that marvel which in time got the name anamorphosis. I will later return to the construction of the anamorphosis, its technique and function, but not until the following example has been introduced.
Without doubt the most famous anamorphosis must be the one which is to be found on the German artist Hans Holbein the younger\’s breathtaking painting The Ambassadors from 1533 (National Gallery of Art, London):

On the lower part of the painting – on the floor – a strange oblique and indeterminable form is to be seen. It is an optical anamorphosis. If it is viewed from a traditional frontal angle you will only see a strange flat and abstract pattern which seems to fix itself to the surface of the painting, to the picture plane. The flat construction of the anamorphosis prevents the beholders gaze in going through the picture plane and out into the illusory picture space as the gaze does on other parts of the painting?s surface.The experience is especially effective here because the rest of Holbein\’s painting of the Ambassadors in a very convincing manner seems to open up to a three-dimensional space behind the two-dimensional picture plane. This impact was achieved by Holbein by erasing any trace of brushwork from the surface of his painting by which the fictive space behind the picture plane untroubled can extend itself. Now, if you step aside to the right and move close to the wall and you turn your gaze towards the edge of the painting in a certain angle the apparent abstract pattern will shrink and form a normal picture of a skull. In fact this picture will appear with an extraordinary lively three-dimensionality – almost like a hologram – as if you could reach into a real space and grasp the skull. Please view a photography of the anamorphosis from the correct visual angle. The reader should notice that the above mentioned effect can not be expressed in photograph since the picture thereby has been fixed to a plane. The reason why the skull is seen so holographic or authentically three-dimensional when viewed from the correct visual angle is because of the fact that the beholder sees a picture which has no picture plane in a traditional manner. The picture of the normal skull exists in a manner of speaking only in the gaze of the beholder. The rest of the painting does not display this effect in the same way in spite of the fact that it also has a convincingly realistic expression.