The Space

Abstract

It was still early in the spring, one day in March 1716, and perhaps time was passing slowly in the countryside outside Skara. From the episcopal residence of Brunsbo, Swedenborg wrote to ask Benzelius to send him his camera obscura in the blue case. With the camera he intended to ‘make reflexions on the perspective art by the taking of a number of vuer [views] and prospecter.’ He explained to Benzelius where the camera could be found by describing the spatial orientation. It is on the stone ledge in the vault near the cupboard. Benzelius found it. A month later the camera arrived at Brunsbo, brought by Swedenborg’s fellow student from his days at Uppsala, Master Olof Nordborg, who was in Sweden to collect money for the Swedish congregation in London. The camera would be a source of pleasure. As Swedenborg wrote on 12 June, ‘I have already learned the drawing of perspective, to my pleasure. I have exercitium [practice] from churches, houses, etc.; were I up at the works in Fhalun or elsewhere, I would draw them as well as any one, ope hujus instrumenti [by the help of this instrument].’ One may wonder what the mine in Falun would look like in it. The vertiginous depths of the mine shaft, all the parts of the mine machinery would come in the proper relationships to each other, and with the art of perspective they could be exactly depicted in full agreement with the rules of geometry. No drawings from these early summer days are preserved, however, and no writings on the art of perspective, if he ever undertook any. Perhaps they went up in smoke when the episcopal residence of Brunsbo was burnt down once again in 1730.