Simulation: Casotto / Camera Obscura
Come look inside this shack, set up on the piazzetta of St. Marco. In Venice, it's called a casotto. You see one of the wonderous games built by Domenico Selva, a Venetian master optician. He knew the property of all kinds of lenses, burning mirrors, lamps, camere obscure and magic lanterns, as his son Lorenzo later wrote in his dialogues. Come, look inside this casotto, you will see what famous painters saw in their camere obscure: animated paintings, the life of a city unfolding like a play on the stage of one of the hundred theaters. Inside, the city of Venice becomes a game of mirrors. Views of the city transformed into paintings, and paintings mirroring the views just as the city itself is mirrored in the still waters of the lagoon.
