On the Viewing Platform: The Panorama between Canvas and Screen

A wide-ranging study of the painted panorama’s influence on art, photography, and film

This ambitious volume presents a multifaceted account of the legacy of the circular painted panorama and its far-reaching influence on art, photography, film, and architecture. From its 18th-century origins, the panorama quickly became a global mass-cultural phenomenon, often linked to an imperial worldview. Yet it also transformed modes of viewing and exerted a lasting, visible impact on filmmaking techniques, museum displays, and contemporary installation art. On the Viewing Platform offers close readings of works ranging from proto-panoramic Renaissance cityscapes and 19th-century paintings and photographs to experimental films and a wide array of contemporary art. Extensively researched and spectacularly illustrated, this volume proposes an expansive new framework for understanding the histories of art, film, and spectatorship.

Katie Trumpener is Emily Sanford Professor of Comparative Literature and English and Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art, both at Yale University.