The Painters' Panorama: Narrative, Art, and Faith in the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress [Hardcover]

The Moving Panorama of Pilgrims Progress is an extraordinary 8-foot by 800-foot painting that was created in 1851 and thought lost for a full century. Rediscovered in 1996 and fully restored in 2012, it illustrates John Bunyans iconic book The Pilgrims Progressfirst published in 1678 and in print continuously since thena heart-stopping allegory of trial and faith in which the hero, Christian, battles giants, monsters, tricksters, and his own weaknesses to reach the Celestial City. Moving panoramas were a mid-nineteenth-century precursor to the motion picture, massive canvases that were scrolled across a stage and accompanied by a lecturer and music. One of only a handful that survive today, the Moving Panorama of Pilgrims Progress was one of the most popular and important moving panoramas of its day, with designs by rising luminaries of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting: Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Daniel Huntington, and others. Scholars and fans of theater and film, panoramas, American art, religious studies, literature, and The Pilgrims Progress itself will value this beautifully illustrated volume.

JESSICA SKWIRE ROUTHIER is an independent museum professional affiliated with Maine Archives and Museums and the Maine Photo Project. KEVIN J. AVERY is a researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as a professor of art history at Hunter College of the City University of New York. THOMAS HARDIMAN JR. is keeper at the Portsmouth Athen?um in New Hampshire.

Introduction and Acknowledgments, Leslie L. Rounds A More Perfect View Thereof: Landscape, Religion, and the Artistic Underpinnings of the Panorama, Jessica Skwire Routhier Movies for Manifest Destiny: The Moving Panorama Phenomenon in America, Kevin J. Avery PLATES The Panorama's Progress: A History of Kyle and Dallas's Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress, Thomas Hardiman Jr. Epilogue, Jessica Skwire Routhier