2-995-928 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Stereorama at Cremorne Gardens - panorama of the route to Italy, via the St. Gothard Pass, 1860. 'Madonna del Sasso; Magadino, on the Lago Maggiore; Village of Airolo; Snow Cavern near the Devil's Bridge'. Panoramic landscape '...opening upon the noble vista of the Lago Maggiore, and...terminating at the grand monastic group of the Madonna del Sasso, situate on a commanding rocky eminence...[designed by the 'eminent artists' Grieve and Telbin, being] '...an attempt made to accomplish by means of painting and modelling the peculiar effects produced by the stereoscopic glasses, and more particularly that appearance of relief and solidity in objects which painting alone cannot thoroughly realise...producing a result which so nearly approaches reality as almost to mystify the senses...the spectator is in close proximity to the objects in the foreground, so that he might almost pluck a leaf from a tree, or a blade of grass from the mountain path at his feet...real water is brought [in] at the rate of nine hundred gallons a minute to supply the mimic torrent issuing beneath the Devil's Bridge...The building in which the Stereorama is shown measures some 120 feet across, and is 50 feet high'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.