"When the painter Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859) went to see a panorama in 1812, as an 18-year old art student, he observed that panoramas ‘are perfect in their way. The objects appear so real, that it is impossible to imagine at what distance the canvas is from the eye'. Leslie understood that bending the painting around 360 degrees meant that the picture’s surface and its perspectival plane became incoherent to the viewer, giving an unprecedented sense of depth. Restrained from approaching close enough to see the brush-strokes, the viewer experienced a kind of immersive wonder. The panorama was an ‘illusion […] as complete as it is possible to imagine’."