Droste effect
Recursive visual effect
The Droste effect ( Dutch pronunciation: [ˈdrɔstə] ), known in art as an example of mise en abyme , is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This produces a loop which in theory could go on forever, but in practice only continues as far as the image's resolution allows.
The effect is named after a Dutch brand of cocoa , with an image designed by Jan Misset in 1904. It has since been used in the packaging of a variety of products. The effect is seen in the Dutch artist M. C. Escher 's 1956 lithograph Print Gallery , which portrays a gallery that depicts itself. Apart from advertising, the Droste effect is displayed in the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water : this contains a model of itself, with two further iterations. The effect has been a motif, too, for the cover of many comic books , where it was especially popular in the 1940s.
Effect
Origins
The Droste effect is named after the image on the tins and boxes of Droste cocoa powder which displayed a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a box with the same image, designed by Jan Misset. [2] This familiar image was introduced in 1904 and maintained for decades with slight variations from 1912 by artists including Adolphe Mouron . The poet and columnist Nico Scheepmaker introduced wider usage of the term in the late 1970s. [3]
Mathematics
The appearance is recursive : the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on. [4] Only in theory could this go on forever, as fractals do; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size. [5] [6]
-
Droste effect by image manipulation (using GIMP ).
Medieval art
The Droste effect was anticipated by Giotto early in the 14th century, in his Stefaneschi Triptych . The altarpiece portrays in its centre panel Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi offering the triptych itself to St. Peter . [7] There are also several examples from medieval times of books featuring images containing the book itself or window panels in churches depicting miniature copies of the window panel itself. [8]
-
The early 14th century Stefaneschi Triptych . In the central panel is the kneeling figure of Cardinal Stefaneschi ...
-
... who is holding the triptych itself.
M. C. Escher
The Dutch artist M. C. Escher made use of the Droste effect in his 1956 lithograph Print Gallery , which portrays a gallery containing a print which depicts the gallery, each time both reduced and rotated, but with a void at the centre of the image. The work has attracted the attention of mathematicians including Hendrik Lenstra . They devised a method of filling in the artwork's central void in an additional application of the Droste effect by successively rotating and shrinking an image of the artwork. [4] [9] [10]
Advertising
In the 20th century, the Droste effect was used to market a variety of products. The packaging of Land O'Lakes butter featured a Native American woman holding a package of butter with a picture of herself. [4] Morton Salt similarly made use of the effect. [11] The cover of the 1969 vinyl album Ummagumma by Pink Floyd shows the band members sitting in various places, with a picture on the wall showing the same scene, but the order of the band members rotated. [12] The logo of The Laughing Cow cheese spread brand pictures a cow with earrings. On closer inspection, these are seen to be images of the circular cheese spread package, each bearing the image of the laughing cow. [4] The Droste effect is a theme in Russell Hoban 's children's novel, The Mouse and His Child , appearing in the form of a label on a can of "Bonzo Dog Food" which depicts itself. [13] [14]
- In advertising
-
Judge cover,
19 January 1918 -
Liberty cover,
10 May 1924 -
Royal Baking Powder , early 20th century
Comic books
The Droste effect has been a motif for the cover of comic books for many years, known as an "infinity cover". Such covers were especially popular during the 1940s. Examples include Batman #8 (December 1941–January 1942), Action Comics #500 (October 1979), and Bongo Comics Free For All! (2007 ed.). Little Giant Comics #1 (July 1938) is said to be the first-published example of an infinity cover. [15]
See also
- Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes , a movie prominently incorporating the effect
- Chinese boxes
- Dream within a dream
- Fractal
- Homunculus argument
- Infinity mirror
- Infinite regress
- Matryoshka doll
- Infinity
- Quine
- Scale invariance
- Self-similarity
- Story within a story § Fractal fiction
- Video feedback
Notes
- ↑ Johannes (Jan) Misset was born in Haarlem on 8 March 1861 to Willem Jacobus Misset and Catharina Schmidt, and worked as a painter of advertisements. He designed the nurse image for Jan Gerard Droste, based on the painting La serveuse chocolat (c. 1745) by Jean-Étienne Liotard . [1] The Droste tin design was reworked only eight years later by "Cassandre" ( Adolphe Mouron ) into its more famous form. Misset died in Haarlem on 26 August 1931, so his design is out of copyright.
References
-
↑
"1863–1918 from confectioner to chocolate producer"
.
Droste
. Archived from
the original
on 4 March 2016
. Retrieved
28 February
2018
.
Around the year 1900 the illustration of the "nurse" appeared on Droste's cocoa tins. This is most probably invented by the commercial artist Jan (Johannes) Musset [misspelling for Misset], who had been inspired by a pastel of the Swiss painter Jean Etienne Liotard "La serveuse de chocolat", also known as "La belle chocolatière".
- ↑ "Bedenker van Droste-effect bekend" , Trouw , 1 August 1994. Note that many sources misspell his last name as Musset.
- ↑ "Droste, altijd welkom" . cultuurarchief.nl . Archived from the original on 30 March 2008 . Retrieved 18 November 2007 .
- 1 2 3 4 Merow, Katharine (2013). "Escher and the Droste Effect" . Mathematical Association of America . Archived from the original on 2 August 2013.
- ↑ Nänny, Max; Fischer, Olga (2001). The Motivated Sign: Iconicity in Language and Literature . John Benjamins . p. 37. ISBN 978-90-272-2574-0 .
-
↑
Juola, Patrick; Ramsay, Stephen (2017).
Six Septembers: Mathematics for the Humanist
. Zea Books. p.
116
.
ISBN
978-1-60962-111-7
.
By putting a picture inside a picture, you get a progression of suggessively smaller, but self-similar images (the box of Droste cocoa has a picture of a woman holding a box of Droste cocoa... ). In theory, this nesting could go on forever into infinite detail, but in practical terms, the resolution of the image limits how it's actually drawn.
- ↑ "Giotto di Bondone and assistants: Stefaneschi triptych" . The Vatican . Archived from the original on 30 November 2016 . Retrieved 23 June 2008 .
-
↑
See the collection of articles
Whatling, Stuart (16 February 2009).
"Medieval 'mise-en-abyme': the object depicted within itself"
(PDF)
.
Courtauld Institute
. Archived from the original on 2 November 2013.
{{ cite web }}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link ) for examples and opinions on how this effect was used symbolically. - ↑ de Smit, B.; Lenstra, H. W. (2003). "The Mathematical Structure of Escher's Print Gallery" (PDF) . Notices of the American Mathematical Society . 50 (4): 446–451. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 April 2021 . Retrieved 28 April 2021 .
- ↑ Lenstra, Hendrik; De Smit, Bart. "Applying mathematics to Escher's Print Gallery" . Leiden University . Archived from the original on 14 January 2018 . Retrieved 10 November 2015 .
- ↑ Barr, Jason; Mustachio, Camille D. G. (15 May 2014). The Language of Doctor Who: From Shakespeare to Alien Tongues . Rowman & Littlefield . p. 41. ISBN 978-1-4422-3481-9 . Archived from the original on 10 February 2019 . Retrieved 17 October 2016 .
- ↑ Den Hartog, Ben (11 November 2011). "The Droste effect on Pink Floyd album Ummagumma" . OtherFocus. Archived from the original on 24 November 2015 . Retrieved 21 September 2015 .
- ↑ Kelly, Stuart (31 December 2013). "The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban: moving metaphysics for kids" . The Guardian . Archived from the original on 14 November 2017 . Retrieved 13 November 2017 .
- ↑ "Bonzo Canned Dog Food" . Box Vox. 20 November 2013. Archived from the original on 14 November 2017 . Retrieved 13 November 2017 .
- ↑ Cronin, Brian (15 December 2018). "What Was the First Comic Book 'Infinity Cover'?" . Comic Book Resources . Retrieved 19 January 2022 .
External links
- Escher and the Droste effect
- The Math Behind the Droste Effect (article by Jos Leys summarizing the results of the Leiden study and article)
- Droste Effect with Mathematica
- Droste Effect from Wolfram Demonstrations Project