Moving Pictures

After briefly exploring various conceptions of the Europe-Asia divide, the paper observes how one panoramic image of Tobol’sk – a Russian town in the heart of Eurasia – traveled through several early modern manuscripts. While it is well known that the Dutchman Nicolas Witsen had a hand in the production of the western European texts that featured the Tobol’sk panorama and that the Tobol’sk panorama Witsen reproduced was a copy of one by the Siberian cartographer S.U. Remezov, this paper wonders if amateurish panoramas by Nicolaas Witsen may have inspired Remezov’s Tobol’sk panorama. While questions about this panorama’s history and textual “travels” remain, this preliminary inquiry and speculation remind us to be attentive to unexpected dynamics and modes of early modern transmission

Art · Art history · Panorama · Speculation · Visual arts · Central European and Russian historical studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History