DISCURSIVE AND FICTIONAL TEXTS ON THEATRICAL VISION

• Philosophers on stage-sets as the origin of landscape

The scientist Joseph Priestely, in his book on vision (1772), saw stage-sets  as the origin of  the use of perspective in landscape painting

Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light and Colours (London,1772), Period II, Section V, 91.

The Art of Perspective owes its birth to painting, and particularly of that branch of it which was employed in the decorations of the theatre, where landscapes were principally introduced.

• Literary renderings of the theatrical view of the landscape

In fiction, theatrical terms were also used in descriptive passages to structure the landscape. Jane Austen parodies this kind of style in Northanger Abbey (begun in 1797, published posthumously in 1818), where characters with pretensions to taste describe a landscape in terms of 'side-screens' : ' He talked of fore-grounds, distances, and second distances---side-screens and perspectives ---lights and shades'. 'Side-screens' is borrowed from the theatre (the successive illusionistic paintings on both sides of the central vista of the stage); it is placed in a list of pictorial terms (foreground...).

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