Viajes de ilusión visual y literaria. El cosmorama de Nicolino Calyó

Abstract

From 1808, when the Piedmontese refugee Gazzera opened the first cosmorama in Paris, numerous optical shows were advertised under this name, cosmorama, throughout Europe, especially since the closure of his shop in 1832. However, newspaper accounts show that cosmoramas arrived in Spain earlier, when Robertson visited in 1820. It is true that not all exhibitions were of the required quality and novelty, so that the skill of the exhibitor, the show poster or brochure, or the newspaper review were often more important in ensuring success. This article will analyse both the physical experiences carried out and the journalistic literaturisation of these journeys of illusion, and will pay special attention to the figure of the artist Nicolino Calyó, a painter who would make the cosmorama, and other visual spectacles, his way of life both in Europe and in America. Moreover, during his visit to Cuba, the cosmorama deserved a review that took the form of a literary journey, an article that, while demonstrating the link between the visual and the literary journey, demonstrates how the text can become a vicarious experience of the spectacle itself, and this one, in turn, a simulacrum of the real thing.

Keywords

• visual culture
• cosmorama
• vicarious experience
• journalistic literature
• Nicolino Calyó