Leonard Freed

the Prague Castle Administration

Luke Syson is curator of metals at the British Museum

and the author of A History of Reading and Writing in the Western World (Palgrave Macmillan

didactic manner

Carmontelle's Landscape Transparencies: Cinema of the Enlightenment calligraphy Leonard FreedLaurence Chatel de Brancion Louis de Carmontelle was an eighteenth century French draftsman, painter, and garden designer. Beginning in 1783 he painted a series of panoramas on translucent paper that became a popular source of entertainment at royal court gatherings. These rolled up transparencies (rouleaux transparents) were cranked through a backlit viewing box, and the "moving pictures" were accompanied by live storytelling that gave spectators the