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Droste effect

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The original 1904 Droste cacao tin, designed by Jan Musset (1861–1931)[a]

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, producing a loop which theoretically could go on forever, but realistically only goes on as far as the image's quality allows.[2]

The effect is named for a Dutch brand of cocoa, with an image designed by Jan Musset in 1904. It has since been used in the packaging of a variety of products. The effect was anticipated in medieval works of art such as Giotto's Stefaneschi Triptych of 1320.

Effect[]

Further information: Mathematics and art

Origins[]

Detail from the 1320 Stefaneschi Triptych showing Cardinal Stefaneschi holding the triptych itself

The effect is named after the image on the tins and boxes of Droste cocoa powder, one of the main Dutch brands, 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.[3] This image, introduced in 1904, and maintained for decades with slight variations from 1912 by artists including Adolphe Mouron, became a household notion. Reportedly, poet and columnist Nico Scheepmaker introduced wider usage of the term in the late 1970s.[4]

Mathematics[]

The appearance is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on.[5] 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.[6]

Medieval art[]

The Droste effect was anticipated by Giotto in 1320, in his Stefaneschi Triptych. The polyptych altarpiece portrays in its center 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]

M. C. Escher[]

The Dutch artist M. C. Escher made use of the Droste effect in his 1956 lithograph Print Gallery, which depicts 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 Bart de Smit and 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.[5][9][10]

Modern usage[]

The Droste effect was used in the packaging of Land O'Lakes butter, which featured a Native American woman holding a package of butter with a picture of herself.[5] Morton Salt similarly makes 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.[5] 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]

A three-dimensional example of the Droste Effect can be seen in Bourton-on-the-Water, England. A model of Bourton-on-the-Water was built within the village in the 1930s at a 1:9 scale and contains within it a model of itself, which in turn includes a further smaller model, and then an even smaller model within that.[15][16]

Illustrations[]

  • Judge cover, 19 Jan 1918

  • Liberty cover, 10 May 1924

  • Royal Baking Powder, early to mid 20th century

  • Droste effect by image manipulation (using GIMP)

  • Effect illustrated on a laptop screen displaying a Wikipedia page

  • A model replica of Bourton-on-the-Water village contains a model of the model village, with two more recursions.

See also[]

Explanatory notes[]

  1. ^ Johannes (Jan) Musset was born in Haarlem on 8 March 1861 to Willem Jacobus Musset 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. Musset died in Haarlem on 26 August 1931, so his design is out of copyright.

References[]

  1. ^ "1863 - 1918 from confectioner to chocolate producer". Droste. 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, who had been inspired by a pastel of the Swiss painter Jean Etienne Liotard "La serveuse de chocolat", also known as "La belle chocolatière".
  2. ^ Nänny, Max; Fischer, Olga (2001). The Motivated Sign: Iconicity in Language and Literature. John Benjamins. p. 37. ISBN 90-272-2574-5.
  3. ^ Törnqvist, Egil. Ibsen: A Doll's House, pp.105, Cambridge University Press (1995) ISBN 0-521-47866-9
  4. ^ "Droste, altijd welkom". cultuurarchief.nl.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Merow, Katharine (2013). "Escher and the Droste Effect". Mathematical Association of America. Archived from the original on 2 August 2013.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ "Giotto di Bondone and assistants: Stefaneschi triptych". The Vatican.
  8. ^ 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.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) for examples and opinions on how this effect was used symbolically.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Lenstra, Hendrik; De Smit, Bart. "Applying mathematics to Escher's Print Gallery". Leiden University. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ Kelly, Stuart (31 December 2013). "The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban: moving metaphysics for kids". The Guardian.
  14. ^ "Bonzo Canned Dog Food". Box Vox. 20 November 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
  15. ^ Marshall, Brian Robert (8 May 2013). "Model Village, Model Village, Model Village, The Old New Inn, Bourton-on-The-Water". Geograph.
  16. ^ Davies, Caroline (19 April 2013). "Bourton-on-the-Water model village gets Grade II listed status". The Guardian.

External links[]

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