CHAPTER VII.
CYCLORAMAS.
The origin of the cyclorama is traced to the use of scenery by the Italians two or three hundred years ago. They arranged outside of their windows scenes painted on canvas that simulated extensive gardens. Robert Fulton is said to have exhibited a panorama in Paris at the beginning of the present century. It was not, however, a cylindrical painting, as is used in the cyclorama, and the effect was not as illusive. Cycloramas have been on exhibition in many cities of the United States, and they are also very popular abroad.
The cyclorama which we illustrate is the “Battle of Gettysburg,” which has been shown in New York, Brooklyn, and other cities of the United States. It was painted by M. Paul Philippoteaux.
The “Battle of Gettysburg” covers an immense sheet of canvas four hundred feet long and fifty feet high. The canvas was imported from Belgium, none being manufactured in the United States which would answer the purpose; it is nine yards wide, and the seams run up and down. The immense canvas is supported from the sides of the building so as to form a cylinder. The building is circular, and a cornice is provided which runs entirely around the building; the upper edge of the canvas is nailed to this cornice. The cloth is first rolled smoothly on an iron roller surfaced with wood, fifty feet long. The roller is held vertically in heavy framework which runs on tracks around the building. From the roller thus carried around, the cloth is gradually paid out, as shown in our [engraving]. As fast as it comes off the roller it is seized and held by pincers while the edge is being tacked to the cornice. The lower edge is secured to a circle of gas pipes which run entirely around the building. As the pipe would not give sufficient weight to stretch the canvas, a twenty-five-pound weight is hung at every third foot.
SECTION THROUGH A CYCLORAMA.
The effect of the stretching is that the canvas loses the true cylindrical shape; its sides are no longer parallel, but curve slightly inward, about one foot in amount, at the center. Thus, at the horizon line, the most distant part of the scene, the painting is about a foot nearer the vertical line than in the foreground. In absolute distance from the eye the difference is still greater. Owing to obliquity of the line of sight, the foreground, which seems so near at hand, is really much further off than the horizon.
