Legend: The Origin of Painting

submitted by Tom_Bombadil from self.history

There is an old legend written down by Pliny called the origin of painting.

A girl traces the outline of her lovers shadow on the wall before he dies.

It's often cited as the first reference to the idea of photography.

In a world full of dick pics it's hard to cast your mind back to a time when a photograph of your loved ones corpse before it rots away would have been tremendous source of comfort.

https://img-comment-fun.9cache.com/media/adLKGYd/anGAp649_700w_0.jpg

all 10 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]cunninglingus 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Yes, except that photography is not the correct comparison. There was no concept of the photograph in antiquity. To mirror nature or one's lover was to reify them, to make them appear three-dimensional or sculptural. Pliny's paintings were considered so much like the mirror of nature that there is a story of birds trying to get the grapes in one of the paintings.

[–]ID10T 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

There was actually. The history of a "camera obscura" has been traced back to BC and possibly prehistoric cave paintings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura

[–]cunninglingus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Major differences:

Those are temporary mirrors of Nature, not imprints

Experiments like the one discussed by Euclid merely involve a shiny plate inside a vessel that has a hole punched through the other end and a view area cut into the clay vessal above the shiny plate. That merely indicated that light travels in a straight line and the images were of course temporary.

Another temporary image was the look of one's face in a pool of water.

Temporary images also formed inside tents or caves that had a hole in their walls.

All of the above temporary images are somewhat blurry.

Pliny referred to a crisp illusion of nature, something that appeared to be three-dimensional, albeit artifice/unnatural. To him and others, a natural imprint of the mirror of nature was not possible, unless it was temporary.

[–]SheKnowsWhatAllKnow 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Nothing mortal is permanent.

[–]jordan-paul 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I believe that spiritual love is true love, not physical love

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

What a hottie.

[–]cunninglingus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Seems you didn't vote on this post, as there is only my vote on it at the moment. Vote on posts, nigga.

[–]LarrySwinger2 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You're right, we should upvote every real post at this point to drown out the spam a little bit.

[–]jet199 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

To be fair the cloudflair thing means people think they have voted on posts but it doesn't go through.

[–]IkeConn 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

She want to fuuuuuuuuuuuck him.