Le meraviglie proiettive della Roma barocca = le anamorfosi della villa progettata da Francesco Borromini ed Emmanuel Maignan per il Cardinale Pamphilj

In the middle of the XVIIth century the architect Francesco Borromini and the monk Emmanuel Maignan collaborated
together in a project for a villa commissioned by Cardinal Camillo Pamphilj. Borromini realized the blueprints and
Maignan wrote a list of scientific devices conceived as decoration of the dwelling and its gardens around. Some points of the
Munuscript describe anamorphical projections similar to optic experiments and generally connected to perspective laws.
Deeply inside, the monk suggests to create a direct anamorphosis in the main hall of the villa, designed to be observed from the northern loggia; a catoptric anamorphosis, provided with some conical mirrors, on the cross vaults of the same portico; a dioptric anamorphosis, arranged to be seen through a monocle equipped with a prismatic lens, in the southern loggia. These three types of anamorphic images respect the ones explained by father Jean François Niceron in his treatise La Perspective Curieuse, that probably influenced the scientific manuscript by Maignan for Villa Pamphilj.