Insights on the pirouette with Mademoiselle Parisot

Attributed to Arthur William Devis, Mademoiselle Parisot, c. 1797, pencil, watercolour.
Attributed to Arthur William Devis, Mademoiselle Parisot, c. 1797, pencil, watercolour.

Mademoiselle Parisot, the French-born dancer and singer, enthralled conservative English audiences when she debuted on the London stage in 1796 aged about 18 years. She captivated audiences with an almost magical power to balance herself horizontally while pivoting on one toe. Her bold grace also caught the attention of the press and caricaturists. The Monthly Mirror reported that she created ‘a stir by raising her legs far higher than was customary for dancers’ while artists such as Cruikshank lampooned her audience, rapt from gazing beneath her skirts.

The delicate drawing of Parisot in the Baillieu Library is a far less risqué portrait of the dancer renowned for her scandalous, gauzy costumes. The image is not signed, but a 1797 mezzotint after Arthur William Devis suggests that this is the original work of art reproduced. The artist has shied away from capturing the famous height of her leg in the pirouette and instead it trails awkwardly behind her (Devis’ career as an artist struggled in the 1790s). Dancers had just dispensed with heeled shoes and Parisot is depicted with the new flat shoes which were secured with ribbons and allowed the performer to leap, turn and fully extend their feet.


Peep at a vue d’optique

Vue d'optique: Vue de la Facade du Louvre à Paris (1770-90)
Vue d’optique: Vue de la Facade du Louvre à Paris (1770-90), etching, Gift of Russell Beedles, 2012.

The 18th century gave us the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the lightning rod. It also gave us the less well known vue d’optique, a type of print that was viewed with a zograscope. These scenic prints were designed to be seen through an optical device comprising a lens and mirror which combined to form an experience commonly called a ‘peep show.’

Logically, perspective played an important role in these pre-photographic images because depth gave the picture the ability to advance and recede before the eyes of the viewer. They also offered the viewer the chance to travel by picture to far away destinations. Vue d’optique were exported around Europe and America, and notably, to Japan where they are credited with introducing Western perspective to Japanese printmakers.

Vue d’optique are identifiable by their use of extreme perspective, contrasting colours and by their titles which are printed in reverse.


New Year, New You!

At the beginning of a new decade, it seems important to reflect on what aspirations we have not just for ourselves as individuals but also for our collective species. What do we place the most value on in Western culture today? What signifies an individual’s worth? It is undeniable that physical beauty is associated with success and wealth in contemporary society but without questioning where and when this association might have originated, it dangerously becomes the assumption that beauty has always been symbolic of accomplishment or that to achieve something, one must be beautiful.

To many, it seems that placing such value on physical appearance is somehow an unavoidable, innate quality of human beings – perhaps it has even been framed as a necessary trait for our species to differentiate from other animals and progress our civilisation via our ability to conceptualise beauty. But this obsession with the aesthetics of the human body and the widespread dissemination of images that project an ideal of beauty to the masses only began around the time of the Industrial Revolution, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Broadsheet: The shop for new heads (Newer haupt und kopff kram), c.1650, engraving and letterpress
The shop for new heads (Newer haupt und kopff kram), c.1650, engraving and letterpress

The University’s Print Collection contains an absurdist satirical broadsheet (c. 1650), which was created prior to this era, with a darkly comical engraving titled ‘The Shop for New Heads’. Its featured image shows insecure and gullible civilians, dissatisfied with their current facial appearances being decapitated. Whilst this strange practice occurred, cabbages were placed at the top of their necks to stop them bleeding out. This gory scene references a legend that was popular during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in parts of central Europe about a bakery in a Flemish town called Eeklo where people could go to have their detached heads made more aesthetically pleasing by sprinkling them with flour, glazing them with egg yolk and baking them in an oven, to then be reattached once they had been ‘improved’.

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Making rare collections accessible: An interview with Lisa O’Sullivan

Special Collections and Grainger Museum Blogger, Ana Jacobsen, recently interviewed Dr. Lisa O’Sullivan to find out what the role of Program Manager, Outreach and Engagement at the University of Melbourne entailed. Lisa is a qualified historian who has also worked as a curator in London, New York and Australia.

Rare books card catalogue.
Rare books card catalogue.

Continue reading “Making rare collections accessible: An interview with Lisa O’Sullivan”


Lasting Impressions: Understanding the significance of the Great Seal of England

Ana Jacobsen viewing the Great Seal of England in the Reading Room
Ana Jacobsen viewing the Great Seal of England in the Reading Room

Symbols and reminders of the British Commonwealth in modern day Australia appear not only in the form of images but also in the language we adopt. The terminology we use to define the status of our laws, what we choose to call the day this continent was colonised and the figures we decide to honour in the naming of our streets, suburbs and cities are all linguistic reflections of our nation’s apparent values.

Understanding the history of certain monarchical practices in England can help us to understand the origin of colonial perspectives that not only go unquestioned but still get largely celebrated in contemporary culture and society.

The University of Melbourne’s Rare Books collection houses many items that can assist in this kind of research that involves developing an understanding of the significance of a residual British colonial presence in Australia.

One such item is the Great Seal of England – also known as the Great Seal of the Realm – which has been used since the 11th century to signify the approval and authentication of state documents by the monarch. Originally made by pressing an engraved matrix into a wax and resin mixture, the Great Seal served as an accessible means of pictorial expression to show that an official document had been approved by the sovereign during a time when much of the population of England could not read or write.

The Great Seal of England, 1338, Rare Books, University of Melbourne
The Great Seal of England, 1338, Rare Books, University of Melbourne

Continue reading “Lasting Impressions: Understanding the significance of the Great Seal of England”


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