Kolekcja | 23.09.2015 It would be difficult to describe this item without any reservations as a work of art. The composition enclosed in a glassed-in box is a montage of fragments of a copperplate tinted with watercolour and glued onto a piece of cardboard with semi-precious stones imitating plants. The monument is distinguished for its naive charm and appears to be the work of an amateur. It is a diorama of sorts – an illusionistic plaything intent on achieving the illusion of three-dimensional space. The term "diorama" comes from the Greek: dia – thorough, and horama – view.
This type of semi-visual arts imagery, usually landscapes or vedutte and more rarely mythological or historical scenes, was extremely fashionable in the nineteenth century due to Louis Jacques Daguerre, the pioneer of photography. Paintings or enlarged photographs were placed against a background, and in the forefront, at a certain distance, the artists added a model made out of natural components; in the case of larger compositions, they added realistic objects and even stuffed animals. Smaller-size nineteenth-century dioramas, mainly from Bohemia and Silesia, have survived to our times.
Krystyna Gutowska-Dudek