In Prato della Valle, on the top floor of the monumental Palazzo Angeli, it is possible to visit the Minici Zotti Collection which for many years has aimed to enhance and spread knowledge about the origins of images projected on screen. The museum, established by the Municipality of Padua, has provided the city with a “flagship”, including optical instruments and toys, rare iconographic and bibliographic materials, musical instruments and especially a significant number of Magic Lanterns and projection slides, documenting the fascinating journey of still and animated images from the 18th century to the birth of Cinema. Specific sections are dedicated to photography, stereoscopy, and Magic Lanterns.
The Magic Lantern is an optical device invented in the mid-17th century, suitable for projecting small painted images or photos on glass onto a screen, enlarging them. The projection slides, true miniatures, can be still or animated by small and complex mechanisms. Series dedicated to Astrology, the funny Circus characters, fantastic apparitions, transitions from day to night, moral tales, the northern lights of the North Pole, fables, and legends, present the most successful iconographic subjects of the 18th and 19th centuries. The series dedicated to the Grand Tour takes us in the footsteps of the educational journey that young heirs of European noble families took through Europe at the time.
Scientific subjects are also present with les projections vivantes, the surprising effects of “mechanical pictures” with spurting fountains, volcanic eruptions, snow, rain, lightning, rainbow, and rare images with erotic content, ending with Chromatrope, evocative color projections resembling the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals. In 1895 the Cinematograph was born and the Magic Lantern was sadly relegated to attics. Today considered simplistically as the ancestor of Cinema, it offered for centuries to audiences of the time what were called “Grandiose Shows”.
The museum path begins at the evocative “Campiello delle Meravegge”, which welcomes the visitor upon arrival. In the 18th century, strange characters could be found in the streets of Venice, and all over Europe, entertaining with optical views and the New World, “the industrious little machine” that for a small fee showed “many wonders”, as described by Carlo Goldoni. Like all private collections, this one reflects the taste of Laura Minici Zotti, collector, “lanternist” and museum director, who has long gathered objects on Precinema, favoring those that interested her most. The museum’s aim is to bring the public closer to this unusual but little-known aspect of vision, organizing traveling exhibitions especially on Stereoscopy and Silhouettes. The next exhibition will be on French Shadow Theatre. The show of cut-out shadows on zinc was born in Paris, at the Cabaret du Chat Noir, a famous venue for performances, starting in 1881.
Information about Precinema Museum
Prato Della Valle, 1a
35123 Padua (Padua)
0498763838
info@minicizotti.it
Source: MIBACT
