This beautiful artefact is in the holdings of the Spanish Film Archive, sourced from Tomás Mallol Deulofeu on 2 December 1988 (inventory numbers 3983 to 3984): it is an English duplex magic lantern on a wooden base. Rectangular body includes a brass front and side doors, and the removable chimney is shaped like a truncated cone. It is preserved in an exhibition display case, Floor 1, next to the entrance to Room 132.
Professional models, more complex, expensive and robust, could incorporate several lanterns stacked one above another. Called poliorama, or a biunial or triunial lantern – according to Anglo-Saxon terminology, when there were two or three complete bodies superposed – they blended images that were originally separate: the famous “dissolving views” (dissolving pictures), thanks to mechanisms that cast the beams of light onto the same area of the screen.
This type of lantern was used for public exhibitions. The double body served to switch from one view to another without interruption and to superimpose two views.
The model is published as open access record in the EUreka3D Data Hub, aggregated in Europeana in the context of Twin.it for Spain, with collaboration of Spanish National Aggregator HISPANA.
- Read a blogpost about the Magic Lantern on Europeana.eu
