Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas etc. And don’t forget mezzotints ipso facto, of course (nodding to M.R. James):
If the bubble’s brief lifespan prompted considerations of vanitas and melancholy, its shape offered a vantage onto the laws of color, light, and space. Pelagio Palagi’s 1827 Newton’s Discovery of the Refraction of Light envisions the scientist finding revelation in the stuff of child’s play. As Isaac Disraeli recorded with pith in Curiosities of Literature: “Newton is indebted for many of his great discoveries… he observes boys blowing soap bubbles, and the properties of light display themselves!” In addition to the body-as-bubble, there seems to be a parallel between this soapy form and the stuff of thought — the bubble catching Newton’s eye in Palagi’s work is at once a demonstration of optical interference and a painterly technique for visualizing units of undiscovered knowledge, retrievable from the external world. An astounding 1883 mezzotint by Alexandre-Blaise Desgoffe demonstrates the principles of interference up close, displaying a kaleidoscopic window mirrored in the soap bubble, which, in turn, becomes a window onto understanding the physical properties of light. ©
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