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Robert Barker's 'Panorama' : A Room with a View
In 1787, the painter Robert Barker opened an exhibition in Edinburgh which was to have a major impact on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industries. It featured a panoramic view of the city of Edinburgh painted around the inner wall of a rotunda which, viewed from the center of the room, gave the spectator the illusion of reality. During the nineteenth century, panoramas and related forms of visual illusionism--dioramas, moving panoramas, peep-shows--became an early form of mass entertainment in European and American cities. pic showing actual panorama.
Other panoramas..
