oa Deep Time Through the Lens of the Magic Lantern: Genesis and Geology

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Since the second half of the nineteenth century a specific spectacle was drawing a lot of attention: Earth Before the Deluge, a performance of lantern slides picturing the world from the formation of the solar system to the destiny of humankind. These shows were sparked by new geologic evidence of planetary time extending much further back than orthodox Christian chronology. For the first time in history, prehistoric animals walked the stage in idealized landscapes. The imaginative repertoire of those who designed these scenes brought into conjunction natural history illustration with aesthetic iconography and biblical tradition. A case in point is a magnificent sequence of slides taken from La Terre avant le déluge, a book published in 1863 by the French populariser of science Louis Figuier (1819-1894). The scenes were initially drawn by Édouard Riou (1833-1900), a young illustrator and former student of the French printmaker Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful illustrators of the nineteenth century. Riou’s canonical sequence of scenes was purposely designed to bring home the scientific argument in a time when orthodox religious belief had to be reconciled with new empiric findings. The magic lantern performance, the author argues in this chapter, moreover perfectly matched this demand for an integrated vision of prehistory. The specific quality of the medium in regard to structure, experience, and perception helped the new knowledge to feed back into a coherent story. The lantern thus inherently possessed the capacity to set up the negotiation of science and religion, to effect ‘movement’ in thought and to allow new objects of knowledge to emerge.