‘Divides one thing entire to many objects, / Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon, / Show nothing but confusion – eyed awry, / Distinguish form.’ (Shakespeare, Richard II, II, ii, 17)

In this passage William Shakespeare provides an early reference to a tabula scalata or ‘ladder painting,’ which first gained popularity in the late sixteenth century. Tabula scalata are created by transferring two images to either side of vertical wooden prisms. In this way the compositions are only revealed when the viewer alters their perspective and observes the work from an oblique angle. This technique was recorded by mathematician Jean François Niceron in his book La perspective curieuse, published in 1638. The present example, also dated to the seventeenth century, is similar to another extant example in the Museo Galileo, Florence, which depicts the Madonna and a saint (inv. 3688).

This technology provided the basis for lenticular printing, in which an array of lenses over spliced images can create dimensional illusions, and was recently employed on the 2017 minting of the British one-pound coin as an anti-forgery device. Contemporary artists have also taken up this technique - Czech artist and poet Jiří Kolář, for example, adapted the tabula scalata by flattening it out in his prints and collages. Through the fragmentation and reorganization of politically charged images, he hoped to influence his viewer’s perspective.