From the Vault: The Invention of the Mirror, Part 4

kind of monster ghost pop out. Yeah. I feel like this is it's fitting that we're finishing up the Vault episodes about the Mirror as we venture into October, because there's there's a lot of stuff with mirrors, as we've discussed in these episodes that's a little uncanny, and of course we have all these additional supernatural ideas about the mirror that's still resonate with us. You know, I think

they should have more mundane versions of those games. It's always like you say somebody's name in the mirror and they appear, or and they at least scare you, maybe they kill you or whatever. It instead should just be you, you say the ghost's name. And then you notice a pimple on your face you never saw before. You notice

spinach in your teeth. It should be mirror related. So it is the ghost putting spinach in your teeth in the scenario I get, Yeah, maybe I didn't think this through the mirror is haunted, and the mirror will always make sure that there's spinach in your teeth. It seems like a good idea until I said it. Yes, no, okay, let's embrace it. The ghost is literally going into your mouth, invisibly, reaching in there and putting a bit of spinach in between the front two choppers. There you go, So is

this This is digestible spinach. So if you were trapped in a room with this mirror, you could sustain yourself on ghost given spinach bits. There you go, infinite nutrition, yes, alright, and broccoli florets and the incisors yep, alright, it rights itself. Okay, let's let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four

of our series about mirrors. I didn't think we would get this far, but this is one of those where there's there's a lot of different alleys to run down as we make our way along the the historical track. But today I guess we're gonna be talking about glass mirrors more than we did in some of the previous episodes. But to do a brief recap of some of the the technological milestones along the history of mirrors, we we have, of course obsidian mirrors that have been made since prehistory.

Examples found of these go as far back as like six thousand BC and Anatolia associated with the prehistoric Proto city of Chattahoyak, and then beginning around the fourth and third millennium b CE, find evidence of metal mirrors mostly based on copper and copper alloys like bronze in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and of course later mirrors will be made

out of other metals like silver. Silver's a common choice in the Roman Empire um and by the second millennium b C, it seems like metal mirrors proliferate and are found in many settled societies all around the world. Now, before we get in more into a discussion of glass mirror. I want to discuss some things that I read in in the book Mirror Mirror by Mark Pendergrass, which is a wonderful text on the history of the mirror, very readable, UH.

In it, he discusses Chinese mirrors at length, and I wanted to share a few things that we didn't discuss previously for starters. According to Pendagrass, some of the earliest Chinese mirrors, in addition to being made out of some of these other materials we already mentioned, were also made out of polished jade, which is very fascinating to uh

to imagine. I wasn't able to find an image of what this would have looked like, but I guess if if anyone was capable of of polishing jade to the level that it could be used as a reflective surface, it would be the ancient Chinese, who were, you know, very advanced with the use of jade. I don't know, but I imagine that would have um some some similarities with with obsidian as a mirror, because it would provide a sort of reflection of outlines, but it would probably

offer a kind of inverted or distorted color scheme behind things. Yeah. Now in uh. Also, Pendergrass mentions that mirrors were often entombed with the dead, and in one Chinese tumb I think from the third century BC, the corpse's head was quote equipped with a wooden box covered with metal mirrors on the inside. Just fascinating. You'll also find heart protecting mirrors that were sometimes placed on a dead person's chest

and uh. And then he goes on to mention a couple of other mirrors, one that's definitely magical and a and a item of mythology, and the other one, uh, you know, one can ask questions about. So he describes something called the the chow kou paw, which is the quote precious mirror that would illuminate the bones of the body, which was said to allow people to see not only the reflection, but to see their interior organs and to cleanse their innerds uh through some means that they he

didn't have details on. And one of these was said to be kept in a in a grotto in a cliff face, and it was said to be tin square feet in size, so, you know, pretty enormous for a mirror and could reflect the five viscera of a human being. That's so interesting, and it parallels some other things we've talked about, you know, uh, a mystical traditions about mirrors, that they could somehow reflect the true self or reflect something about an image that could not be seen under

normal conditions. And I wonder, like, why is this a common thing to believe about mirrors, because it's literally not true about them. You know that they're like that. They literally just pretty objectively reflect light in the same way that you would see it with your eyes when looking at something, except of course reversed if they're flat, or you know, with some kind of distortions, if their convex

or concave. Yeah. Uh. And now another mirror that he mentions was the the toe Quang chain, which was said to cast a reflection. That quote showed the image on the back as in the back of the mirror, as if the light had penetrated the metal, and he writes that this might have been due to a polishing technique that quote caused imperceptible irregularities on the mirror surface that

corresponded to the raised pictures on the back. So again, this would have been a metal mirror, but there would be a back to it in the same way that we discussed the Chinese mirrors previously. We have some sort of illustration a deity, uh uh, some sort of representation

of an animal or a mythological creature. And so the idea here is that there would be some sort of imperfections in the metal that would that would match up with that illustration on the back of the mirror, and that this would be you know, at least a unique effect. Oh I see. So maybe like the distortions in the reflective surface caused by the decoration on the back could also in some way bring the suggestion of the image on the back into your own reflection when you looked

into it. Yeah. Um, that's interesting because it sort of pairs with something I was reading about. So I was reading a Cabinet magazine article from the year two thousand four written by a guy named Josiah mcelhaney, who is a glassblower actually like a glass artist, and I was just writing some about how the the history of mirrors has sort of developed alongside people's changing perceptions of the self. And this is something we've talked about a little bit

in previous episodes. And one of the things he mentions is the development of mirrors, especially saying like eighteenth century Europe that had a lot of decorative flourishes on the reflecting side. You know, we we've talked about a lot of mirrors that had decorations or carvings, engravings of deities or wishes of good luck or something on the back side, and then just the plain reflective surface on on the side that would be used. But here this is combining

the two. It's putting you know, maybe a floral arrangement or or like etchings of something, you know, like cherubs or something on the part that's reflecting you. So it's sort of like placing your own image within a context, maybe a context of beauty or a context of holiness. So we've already covered the metal mirror quite a bit, but that at this point you're probably wondering what about the glass variant that most of us are used to.

And I think some listeners were actually had actually written in about this and said, hey, you guys started these series about the invention of the mirror, When are you gonna get to the invention of the mirror that we that we all encounter on a daily basis. Um Well, the first glass mirrors seem to have emerged during the third century C. They were quite small, concave or convex metal surfaces with glass coatings. Glass mirrors have been uncovered

in digs dating back to this century. Yeah. Well, actually, I mean, I guess if you want to be really pedantic about it, you could say that the very first mirrors were glass mirrors, because obsidian is a natural form of volcanic glass. But clearly what people mean when they say glass mirrors is the kind where used to today that has a it has a thin pain of clear, very clear, very flat glass, and then behind it a very thin sheet of some kind of highly reflective metal.

And that's what you're talking about here when you might start to see examples of this around the third century CE. Now, when it comes to uh, mirrors in this period, especially mirrors in ancient Rome, already mentioned the idea of silver mirrors, but I've read several sources saying that silver was especially common as a material for looking glasses in ancient Rome.

Even plenty of the Elder actually writes about mirrors in his Natural History, which was written in the first century CE, and in a section about ten which he actually calls stand um, which is how it gets its chemical symbol s n uh. He writes that the finest mirrors used to be prepared at a place called Brundisium, which I think corresponds to a city of is today called like Brindisi or something. It's in southern Italy. Um. But he says that was the case until quote, until everybody, our

maid servants even began to use silver ones. So by the time of plenty, he says, silver mirrors are so common that even the poor have them, even the serving staff have their own silver mirrors. Yeah. And I think I've read some other accounts of of Roman writings that they would even comment about just sort of the mirror craze, just like how how, oh my goodness, everybody has these, They're everywhere. Uh and uh, and you know, sort of using it as a way to discuss the vanity of

the age. Yeah. Now, I think that there is some evidence, like you're saying that during the Roman Empire, there were some mirrors that involved a layer of glass, But but I think most mirrors of this time would not have had glass. They would have been just like a highly

polished silver surface or bronze surface. But we do see the glass mirror began to show up and according to Plenty of the elder, who's actually one of the we we often referred to Plenty here, but he's one of the major sources of the day that that is often referred back to and trying to pinpoint where mirrors are coming from. The glass mirrors are coming from around this time.

But according to Plenty, they were the product of the Lebanese city of Sidon, and the Romans copied these techniques for their own mirrors, which became again quite the craze. And there's another author, I believe it's Alexander of Afro DCS who also wrote about them. So, uh, those are those are two of those sources you see mentioned. I think these are the two that Pendergrass mentions. So do

we know anything about the techniques of production in this period? Okay, So, according to Mark Pendergrast in in that book Syrian Crafts, people near Sidon developed glass blowing techniques around a hundred BC that allowed them to dip a long hollow metal tube into molten glass, retrieve a glob, and and use that glob and that tube to blow glass shapes. And such was their skill that eventually they were, they were

able to do a kind of mass production. Um. And it makes sense of course that these masters of glass would then develop eventually develop a key mirror making techniques as well. And of course it makes sense that the Roman Empire would then take and then spread this technology. So the result of all this would have been small pocket mirrors produced by blowing a thin glass sphere and then pouring hot lead into it, down into the sphere, coating the inside of it. Okay, and then when this

is broken and cut, you had mirror glass. So if you can, you can imagine that like forming this this glob, coating the inside of the globe with the lead, and then breaking that into two walla, you have the makings of a mirror. Nice And it sounds like the Roman copies of this technique might have been on the whole less perfect, with more flaws in the glass, but they were still quite a sensation. Uh. And I'm assuming you know, quite an improvement in terms of availability over the metal mirror,

and it just spread throughout the Roman world. Now I imagine these probably based on the technique you're describing, would not have been super flat that you would probably be ending up with somewhat convex or concave mirrors. Yeah, they would at least be you know, convex to to some degree,

you know. Um. Now, one of the interesting things is that even though this was widespread, even though the Romans copied it, and you were seemingly producing them in more than one location, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the art of convex mirror making was nearly lost. It was kept barely alive apparently in the Near East UM. But until the twelfth century revival of mirror technology in Europe, it would largely be a return to silver and bronze

mirrors that were beyond the budgets of most Europeans. UM. So, yeah, you had the secret of the glass mirror survived in the East and continue you to be said, you know, a matter of study in um in the Islamic world, where there was a lot of study of mirrors and optics. However, eventually you start having these, uh, these these megaprojects coming together in Europe, the Gothic cathedral, and of course you

need glass, you need glass artisans. And so during this time the production of mirrors too began to flourish again, and by the fifteenth century, you have glassmakers in Germany, France and Italy that at all improved quite a bit. Apparently the glassmakers of Florence were pretty well known, but the Venetians really took the cake, particularly on the Aisle of Morano. So from the eleventh century onward, UH, the Venetians held a virtual monopoly on European trade with the East,

and so the importers here they learned glassmaking. Perhaps I think there are a couple of different theories, as Pentagraps describes it. You know, they might have learned some key stuff from the Germans. They also might have learned key things from UH the Islamic world, from Islamic exporters again where of those some of the secrets of mirror making

and optics UH were were kept alive. And so either way, maybe from both influences they began making their own excellent glasses and mirrors, and the Venetian glassmakers formed their own guild in the early twelve hundreds. But of course one of the things about making glass, blowing glass and making mirrors as you need furnaces, and of course that's dangerous

to a city like Venice. So they were made, they were they were forced to move their production out to an island, the island of Murano, and this became the Island of Mirrors. And this is where the art of mirror making was closely and violently guarded, so you could

be sentenced to death for sharing the secrets of glassmaking. Uh. And families of glassmakers apparently who left uh the island in the region would sometimes have their families held hostage to ensure they returned and they didn't share these these vital secrets elsewhere. It's like it's like the KFC Herbs and spices recipes, Like, yeah, I mean, it's a big these were because not only did they have the secrets of making mirrors again and and and doing all this

fine glass work. Uh, glassmaking also evolved further here. It developed further, so clearer glass work was suddenly possible, even clearer mirrors, and they were just a huge craze, especially in the high society of Europe. So they had a vital economic commodity here, so they tightly guarded it. Yeah, they had a beautifully clear glass that was known as

christal O. Yes. So, developing out of these trends after the Renaissance, glass mirrors with metal backing became more and more common, and these had a couple of necessary technical features in order to be a very high quality. So you would need to be able to produce a pain of extremely clear, extremely flat glass and then a flat backing of highly reflective metal on one side of it.

So when you look at a mirror today, typically what you're looking at is there's a pane of glass and it has been coated on the back side with highly reflective metal. And then so you're looking into the glass and your reflection is bouncing off of that reflective metal, and then back through this very clear, very flat glass undistorted towards you. And this could create very nice mirrors,

but there were a few wrinkles here. One thing is that up until the nineteenth century, the dominant method for producing glass mirrors was creating a problem. So let's say it's the early eighteen hundreds and you are a you are a factory, a mirror factory owner, You own a shop floor that makes mirrors, and you look out at your workers and you think something is wrong with these people.

My workers, they keep getting irritable and depressed, and they don't have any energy, and they can't pay attention to things I'm telling them, and they get tremmors and delirium in the middle of a shift. Why can't I get better workers? Well, like many other stories around this time in history, it turned out it is not the fault of the workers but of the materials they were being subjected to on the shop floor, because the mirrors of this time were made with metal backing that contained large

amounts of mercury. And here we're back to a pretty familiar historical subject for our show, which is overexposure to mercury and the health effects thereof. In this case, we're talking about mercury raism or mad Hatter's disease colloquially, which is a neurological disorder resulting from overexposure to mercury. I think it's especially common with mercury fumes inhaled Yeah, we discussed this on the show before, in particular professions of

the day. Of course, you are more likely to be exposed to these mercury fumes, and so the workers in these in these looking glass shops are are just continually being exposed to the horrors of breathing mercury fumes and just generally being exposed to mercury all the time until we get the intervention of a pretty cool figure in the history of chemistry named Eustace von Liebig, who was a German scientist who lived from eighteen oh three to

eighteen seventy three, and von Liebig was responsible for a number of important advancements in organic chemistry and agricultural science that made farming more reliable and famine less common. One of his big contributions is to the modern science of fertilizers, nitrogen fertilizers, and to a better understanding of the relationship between crops success and trace mineral contents in the soil.

Like I think one of the things that's often remembered about him is that he established that you know, basically, you're the success of your crops is going to be limited by whatever the soil is poorest in, like whatever the most limited essential nutrient that the plants need, whatever is the most limited in the soil is going to be the factory that limits the growth of the plants.

And so you could and so you could fix that by say, bringing in animal manure, which contained many minerals and nutrients that plants would need and would help even out the nutrient profile of the soil. Von Liebig was also a pioneer in the perhaps gross but also important science of meat chemistry. Uh. He was really big on not letting nutrition go to waste. So, for example, the kind of nutrients that would be wasted if you were to boil a hunk of beef and then discard the

cooking liquid. You know, in that case, a lot of good nutrition is being extracted by the cooking process and then left in the water. So if only Big developed was you know, use this information to try to develop special cooking methods and in the creation of what was called a meat extract, which could be made into a broth or a meat tea. This reminds me of our past discussions on both gravy but also ultimately the various

sauces that he inspired. Catch up the idea that after you're you're done rendering or cooking that meat or the fish or whatever it happens to be, you're you're often left with these dregs that are that can be super flavorful, um, that can certainly have still have a fair amount of nutritional value. And then what do you do with them? Right? Obviously meat tea? Right? Yeah, you make meat tea, which I don't know. It's funny, Like I don't find the idea of a of a beef broth gross, but when

you phrase it as meat tea, it sounds disgusting. Maybe that's because I'm imagining adding cream and sugar to it. Oh, I mean so much with smell. I think we've discussed in the science of smell or it's about it's about how you're framing it. Um Like at the point the cheese versus smelly shoe example is a is a big one. You know, depending on how people are all or are primed, they'll they'll interpret the smell in a different way. Um. My wife and I had had a similar situation very recently.

We're out walking through the neighborhood and it was garbage day and we walked by this one garbage can and we're like, oh my goodness, that's absolutely foul. Then we realized it wasn't the garbage can. It was somebody grilling seafood just to block up. Of course, it was actually not a foul smell at all. That it was. You know, would rather blur they're pleasing smell, So you know, somebody's

grilling some delicious seafood. But if you walk by a garbage can and you smell it, if you associated with the garbage can, then you might be more inclined to to interpret it as a foul odor. You ever, Um, You're walking around somewhere, say by a bunch of restaurants or buildings or something, and you smell that that that delicious fried food carnival smell. You know, it's the smell of of funnel cake and corn dogs and all that. It's like so so good. And then you realize what

you're smelling is the old grease disposal dumpster behind the place. Yep, yep, I've had that situation as well. Yeah, but for a second, the rat brain is the one calling the shots. Yeah. But anyway, so how does it funly Big connect back to mirrors. Well, remember that the problem is with the mercury exposure that the workers are facing on these factory floors.

In eighteen thirty five, Eustace fon lie Big also discovered a process for making metal backed glass mirrors in a way that wouldn't be nearly as hazardous to the health

of the workers. So, instead of using mercury, fon Liebig's method began by applying silver nitrate in a solution of ammonia to the back of the glass and then exposing that to fumes of formaldehyde, and this would trigger a chemical reaction, reducing the silver nitrate solution to a thin layer of silver stuck to the back of the pain.

And apparently in eighteen fifty six he came up with with another improved method of doing this, and manufacturers eventually found that the layer of silver could be protected by covering it with layers of paint and varnish, and the fon lie Big silvering method became the new standard for several reasons. First of all, silver reflected more light than

the older recipes involving things like mercury and tin. It was less prone to tarnishing, at least within this application when it's protected by these these layers of paint and varnish. And of course I think we would say ethically, most importantly, it didn't poison the workers, or at least not as much. Um so. So the fondly Big method, I think really is the precursor to how most modern glass mirrors are

made today. One thing that's kind of cool. You can probably find this if you if you just look up like a you know, one of those how it's made type videos on a mirror factory. But I don't think I had quite ever thought about this. But most mirrors today,

I think are made as huge sheets. So you will you will start with a large sheet of glass that is you know, highly polished to the correct specifications, and then it is coated with some highly reflective metal backing and then coated with some paint to to protect the metal backing, and then that huge sheet of or material is cut into the shapes that you will need for I don't know whatever the individual mirror framers or manufacturers

or turning it into after that. But you kind of just start with like these big old sheets of mirror stuff kind of the creation of almost like a mirror or material that is then rented down into these smaller forms. Yeah, I'm not sure. I wonder what happens with the leftover parts. So, like you cut the like circles and ovals and squares out of it that you're selling to people, and then what do you have Do you have borders of mirror

stuff left over? Wonder whatever smaller and smaller mirrors, So, for instance, is the dentist mirror made from that same process, or do you need a different mirror making technique in order to get that particular mirror. Are there certain requirements for a for a dental for dental instruments that requires a different mirror making process. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if dental mirrors do involve glass or not. I don't know. They might just get

metal metal. Yeah, it's weird. I've had for something that has been inside my body so many times, I don't think I've had a good look at it. Yeah, I've never had a good look at that caveatron either. I just close my eyes. Well, respect your work, dentists. You'll you'll do great things, but you know it's not fun. Yeah, And you can't ever ask about these things either. I mean sometimes you I can get a question out here and there, but it's it's hard, you know, because they're

in You're right. So at this point, I want to talk a little bit about more about the mirror and metaphor in the mirror, and literature and the arts in general. So we've spoken before. I think we've already touched on in these episodes, even about the importance of technology are in our metaphors, and of course mirrors due factor pretty heavily into our just everyday language mirrors and reflection. If you, for instance, if you're researching some podcast episodes on mirrors

and reflections, you'll you'll often find this. You know, you'll think you have a good source, and you'll start looking around in the source for mentions of mirror is in reflection. Then you realize, oh, some of these are not actual discussions of mirrors or reflections. They're just using them to discuss other things. Uh, they're using them as technological metaphors to discuss something else that might actually be in a

within the same topic or an adjacent topic, etcetera. And of course, one of the things about technological metaphors is we've discussed is that you can use a metaphor of a technology that you don't fully understand to describe another thing that you don't fully understand. And uh, but in a in a weird way, it can be this heuristic that allows you to um, uh, I don't know, to go through your day feeling like you understand what you're

talking about. Like the example we've often referred to as like the idea of okay, security, video camera and memory. I'll use this technological metaphor to understand my memory, even though I really don't understand how the video camera works and I don't understand how memory works, and it's giving me an actual, you know, particular but possibly harmful but at least incorrect idea of what my memory is and

what my visual perception consists of. Right, And so the mirror seems like a perfect example of this kind of object of metaphor. Yeah, because of course the mirror is for the most part, it is a technology. We're talking about something that is um yes, yes, it can occur naturally, but then we have this history of of using technology to augment it and increase it until we get into

this mirror age that we live in. And yeah, it's it's difficult to get through your day without using mirror terminology. I challenge anyone to try it or imagine any work of art without references to mirrors. So I was looking around for any writings on this, and I found a book, a really interesting book from three by Herbert Grabes titled uh, the Mutable Glass, and particularly it's about the the use of the mirror as a as a metaphor, as a symbol,

etcetera in medieval European literature. And I was rather taken with with parts of this book. I want to read a quick quote from it before I continue. Quote. The employment of the mirror in metaphorical context is so frequent and deliberate a strategy in the English literature of the thirteen to seventeen centuries that the mirror can be said to constitute the central image for a particular worldview. So much of the book that follows is concerned with fleshing

this out. You know, this is the central thesis of the book. But but in brief like the mirror becomes this kind of metaphorical center, a frequent focus of art and literature, and the subject and tool of scientific study as well. So it's it's really this kind of mirror mania. Now, Graves is upfront that his chief focus is on medieval Europe thirteen through seventeen centuries, but also points out that

you do see it. You do see the use of mirror show up in earlier literatures as well, but during the time period of focus here, he writes that you could you could almost call it a fad. It was just so frequently employed. It was this kind of mirror mania.

And the reasoning for this, he writes, is, first of all, twelfth century Europe had relearned the ancient art of making glass mirrors, and the following century saw uh, medieval polished metal mirrors overtake those of antiquity, because again, remember, the secret was lost and and it was just the rich who could still hang on to these antique mirrors made of metal or or the or even some of these antique glass ones that no one knew how to make anymore.

But again, by the fifteenth century of Venetian glassmakers had pushed the technology to the point that the general public could get their hands on these small, mass produced and ultimately inexpensive mirrors. Also during this time, like we've been discussing, tin and mercury backings overtook lead and silver, and mirrors

became larger. And he ultimately compares this to um. He compares this a little bit to how popular the photograph became in the nineteenth century, the craze of photography and UH, and we would of course refer back to our invention episodes on on this where we we talked about just what a game changer this was and how it it just it amazed people, It captured the public imagination, and and it also changed the way we thought about ourselves

and how we interact with the world. Yeah. And I think um had some effects on how we thought about the ideas of like the objectivity of reality, like for the first time that an an image of reality could be fixed in time in a somewhat objective way. Right. So Graves writes that the mirror becomes just indispensable when it comes to fashion. It becomes a central focus of art. Um. The mirrors, uh, you know, had been of interest to

great thinkers of antiquity. Uh, and the great thinkers of the Middle Ages likewise picked it up, and we're fascinated with it as well. So it's you just imagine, just everybody, every corner of life, no matter what your focus, you're turning to the mirror. Are you engaging in theology or engaging in philosophy, Are you a scientist? Are you just someone who's really into your appearance? Like the mirror is going to play a role in pretty much all of

these contemplations. Um. And of course his book is is just full of examples of this. So I'm not gonna roll through them. But for one literary example, you can of course turn to Dante. Uh. Dante makes extensive use of mirrors in the Divine Comedy. Um and I was I was reading another article that points out some of the examples. Here a titled light reflection, mirror, Metaphors and

Optical Framing and Dante's Comedy by Simon Gilson. In this points that the Dante drew on his knowledge of the law of light reflection, weakening by reflection, and the multiplication of mirrord light, as well as the lead backing required to make surfaces reflective uh than the mirror, the mirroring properties of water, and the kind of image that is

visible in a mirror. Apparently you see all these different ideas reflected in the Divine Comedy, and in this we have I think we've touched on this before in the show. We have to remember that Dante was a man that was in rested in a vast number of topics, and he managed to work just about all of them into his into his writings, you know, from theology and mythology to politics and personal grudges. Yes, but I mean this does remind me how many parts of the divine comedy.

There are where he's just explaining in minute detail, um, things about how the light is striking something or how an image is created. Uh, some of which I think is actually it can come off as kind of pedantic to modern readers, but some of it is very correct.

I think other stuff he has about the physics of light is kind of off base, yeah, but but certainly, like he is, his eyes are open to to to to an understanding of how light is working and our reflections are working, and then we see that in the work. I think some of the key examples are from Purgatorio and Paradiso Um. There's one in particular that that Gilson highlights, uh. And this is not one I This is from Paradise,

of which I haven't spent as much time with. Uh. But there's apparently a scene that, again I don't remember, where Thomas the Quinas appears and describes how divine light passes from the triune God through angels and so forth. So it's one of these where he's like he's getting he's trying to explain this other worldly, almost you know, psychedelic effect of beholding the celestial realms and using his

understanding of of optics to do, so yeah, totally. Uh, there there is a lot of light in the parody. So I was going to pull a quote from it, but I was like, I was looking over and I'm like, well, this is this is kind of I don't know that the listeners want this. Um. One of the things about about the Divine Comedy, I mean it's it is in its entirety a master work of of Western literature and medieval literature for sure, but um, it is uh, it's

more it's ultimately I think, more fun. When you're in Hell, it's more fun. And Inferno, like there's just a lot more humor, uh, and there's more, you know, the grotesque. And of course, as you work up to Paradiso with Dante, you leave, you increasingly leave a lot of that behind you, and so by the time you get to uh Paradiso, it's it's it's kind of a different beast. The Paradiso still has plenty of politics in it that can be funny.

It is it's it's still good. Yeah. I think also maybe I'm a little biased because the when I studied in college, I was in a Dante class and we were kind of running out of time by the time we got to Paradise, so we kind of had to rush through it. We we spent a lot of time in hell and purgatory. Yeah, I agree that those tend to be a little bit more, They grab you more. Yeah. Now, when it comes to mirrors in visual art, there's there's

so much we might talk about here. We already mentioned the venus effect in part one of this series, but I thought we might touch on on the art of fifteenth century early uh Netherlandish artist John van Eyck, who's um, who in particular is known for some of his paintings that feature mirrors. In fact, there's one, uh, there's one in particular that I think a lot of you have probably seen, and it is um the uh the Arnolfini wedding portrait from fourteen thirty four. And Joe, would you

would you mind describing this painting for our listeners. Well, let's see, in the foreground you have two aliens from Zeta Reticuli. Uh. Now you have two humans who are are I guess they are getting married maybe they're There are two very pale people, a man and a woman. The man is wearing an extremely comically large black hat and the woman is wearing a large green dress, and they're holding hands and there is a very cute small dog at their feet. Um. This obser ration is not

original to me. I can't remember where. I read this on some joke thread on the internet long ago that was very funny. But uh. The author of this thread pointed out that a distinctive feature of the paintings of Jan Vanik is that everybody looks like Vladimir Putin, and in this case, I think that is true. Yeah, everybody looks like Putin, especially the guy in the big hat. Yeah, yeah, Putinsk.

But then in the in the deep background behind this sweating couple and their little dog is a wall mounted convex mirror. Uh. And you can tell it's convex because of the way the image is distorted, so it's around mirror in a sort of wheel like frame, and then within the looking glass part of it, the image is sort of bent in the way you would recognize from from a convex mirror. Uh. And of course it provides I think, what is a fairly accurate rendering of what

their reflection would have been. So you're not seeing the front of them, you were accurately seeing the backs of the people that you're looking at in the foreground. Yes, you see their backs, you see the rest of the room, and then you see something else though. This is and this is this is one of the fascinating things about this picture. I think we've already talked about. Oh, you know times in movies where you you accidentally see a

reflection of the camera crew. Well, in this painting, that's kind of what is happening, or in some interpretations, that's what's happening because there are two individuals in a doorway in the reflection in that that that strange round uh crenulated mirror, and one of these individuals maybe the artist himself. Yeah, it's hard to tell because at this point the detail is very small, but you see like a framed doorway, and um, it looks like somebody dressed in red and

somebody dressed in blue or standing there. So it could be like the blue guy is standing there painting the couple and that is van Ike. Yeah, yeah, there are some different interpretations of it. And then there are words above the mirror that read Johannes van Eck rules no, I mean no, it says he was here. Um, so a lot has been written about this work, and certainly if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend checking it

out because this is just a beautiful, fascinating painting. UM. But a lot of the ideas and interpretations come down to the eye to vision and van I's understanding of optics to relay spiritual ideas concerning the nature of God. So sometimes you see the mirror in this described as the eye of God. I was reading of a little bit more about this mirror in an Optical Revolution in the Middle Ages, The Hidden Talents of Jen Vanik. And this was by Leavin the Vandenable, translated by Kate Connolly.

And this is from the Low Countries dot Com that's with hyphens the hyphen Low hyphen Countries dot COM's an English language website to promote the culture of Flanders and the Netherlands. And in this article they point out that van Ike had first of all an incredible actually game changing talent for painting light in addition to just having

masterful old painting oil painting tech nieks in general. And he also had a knack for observing the interplay of light and shadow and then of course reproducing that in his work. UM. And and this kind of you know, leads to the question, well, okay, it's just like a natural ability to you set this natural insight. You just have this I for how light is interplaying with the natural world. Um, well, that I think some kind of

lean towards that that interpretation. But then there's a there's this other hypothesis that he was actually quite well read on the topic of optics for the day. So the author here writes that, then then I might might have learned about optics from the work of Arabic mathematician astronomer al Hasan, who I believe we've talked about before, who

lived through tim forty. In particular al Hasan's book The Book of Optics, which was translated into Latin uh and was also well known in Europe by the fifteenth century. So it presented new theories concerning how we see, how mirrors and lenses function, and how in the es are formed. Okay, Now, al Hasan is sometimes known as the father of optics, and he worked extensively with mirrors and lenses. Um, there's something called al Hasan's problem that is named for him.

It's a this is a mathematical problem in geometrical optics, which was actually first posed by Ptolemy in one but to which al Hasn't provides an answer in his work Optics. So you can look up you really should look up images of the problem if you want a better understanding of it. But basically, the basic problem is often described as follows. Given a light source and a spherical mirror, find the point on the mirror where the light will

be reflected to the eye of an observer. So al Hasan solved it with geometry, but it remained unsolved using

algebraic methods until the twentieth century. So anyway, the idea here is that perhaps when we're looking at the works of an Ike, we're looking at someone who had at least some degree of familiarity with these ideas, with these uh with these learned concepts about optics and the inner workings of mirrors, that that traveled out of the Arab world into Europe, either in that translation of of his book on Optics or perhaps through another text that referred

back to it. One that the authors mentioned here was John Peckham's um Perspective of Communists. And this was an author who lived twelve thirty through twelve ninety two, and this would have been a text available to fan Ix as well. I would imagine that the problem of drawing, even if you're currently looking at it, the problem of drawing an image as reflected in a convex mirror has got to be really difficult. I said drawing, But I guess in any way visually rendering for an artist painting

or drawing or whatever. Um because and I don't know, maybe we could hear from painters if I'm wrong about this, but my understanding of the way painting works is that it is difficult to just purely reproduce an image you're looking at as the I sees it. But you have to kind of rely on some stereotypical forms to reproduce

the image on the on the painting. So, like you, you have in your mind sort of standard forms of things like what you know, how a hand works, how an arm is, how a face is, and then you are taking those standard forms and reproducing them with the information of the image that you're looking at right now to just sort of fill in the detail. But I would think those standard forms wouldn't really work for an

image that's being distorted by a curved mirror. Yeah, Now, if you want to hear more about how mirrors impacted the world of of painting. Our episode on the camera obscurea goes into that a little bit in the different ideas and hypotheses concerning the use of the camera obscura as a means of of augmenting the creative process of painting.

But but even without getting into this idea of using a camera obscura to project something onto a canvas and then use that as sort of a scaffolding on which you create your art, I think the one of the ideas here that's that's really Tantalizing's just the the the more that these artists were able to understand what they were seeing, how they were seeing, and how light was working, how shadow worked, enabled them to better capture it on the canvas um, which, on one on one hand, like

this this totally makes sense. But on the other I do feel like this has to make a special kind of sense too individuals who, um, who are well versed in painting and the visual arts, you know, uh, because because yeah, because yeah, what's the difference between painting light and shadow if you don't know what light and shadow really are and painting light and shadow when you you have a better understanding of of the the optical reality

of of what you're seeing. Yeah, just off, Mike and I were discussing whether this is the end of the Mirror series or whether we're coming back for more. And here here's the mind blower. We haven't made up our minds yet, so you'll just have to be out there dangling, not knowing whether the next episode is going to be something new or whether the mirror journey continues. But there's a million more interesting things we could talk about, so

maybe more mirrors or maybe onto something else. Yeah, and even if the next episode we do is not about mirrors, that doesn't mean we can't come back and do mirrors. So certainly, if there's anything that you feel that we we missed or we skipped over, or something you you want to know about that we didn't cover in this Mirror saga, then let us know. We would love to

hear from you. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, if you want to catch up on all these Mirror episodes, or look up those photography, Camera Obscura, etcetera. Uh, you can find all of our episodes in uh, this Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and you'll find that feed wherever you get your podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday's Artifact on Wednesday, listener mail on Mondays. On Friday,

we do a little a little weird house cinema. That's when we set aside most of the science and we just talked about a weird film for a little bit. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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