Mirrors answer the desire to behold one's own image — to see oneself as others do. Optically speaking, a mirror is a reflecting surface that forms an image when light rays deflected by an object fall upon it. Nature provided the model: the reflective surface of still water, into which Narcissus so famously gazed. Both the absorption of Narcissus in himself — his vanity — and his fascination with himself as other are central to the mythology of mirrors. When mirrors allow us to see ourselves as others do, they are capable, at best, of initiating a sense of self and identity in the world (as per the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who developed the theory of the ‘mirror stage’ of human development) — and, at worst, of engendering that self-reflexive form of love called vanity.
The earliest known man-made mirrors, circular discs of highly polished obsidian, were discovered in a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia, Turkey, and date to about 6000 bce. Subsequently, discs made of copper and bronze — some with handles, some with stands — made their appearance throughout the Near East. Many of the mirrors of antiquity that have been unearthed appear to have served a religious purpose. The handles of several bronze and silver mirrors dating to c.2000 bce were papyrus-shaped, and resemble the handles of divine standards. Other handles are carved in the form of deities or, as in the case of several Late Period (c.750-332 bce) gilded-silver mirror handles, of four goddesses encircling a papyrus-shaped column.
The ancient Greeks developed the stand mirror — the bottom of whose handle was large enough to serve as a base — and the box mirror, the prototype of the twentieth-century powder compact. The lids of the latter type were frequently decorated with mythological and/or erotic scenes. The glass wall mirror seems to have gained popularity among the Romans around the first century bce. Through trade with the Roman Empire, mirrors found their way to the Indian subcontinent.
In China, mirrors came into use around 2000 bce. Like those of Egypt and Greece, early Chinese mirrors are typically round, made of bronze, and decorated on the back. Throughout much of Asia, mirrors were and still are thought to have the power to avert evil. As a result, mirrors were often buried with the dead, and mirrors are still to be seen on the exterior of South Asian temples: hideous demons, catching sight of themselves, will flee in fright.
In the Christianized West, on the contrary, soulless beings—vampires, werewolves, demons, and the like—were thought to show no reflection in a mirror. The reverse of this superstition was the belief that, after a death in the house, mirrors could hold the souls of the living and detain the soul of the deceased in its flight from the body. Enlightened physicians refused to be daunted, and it became a tradition for a mirror to be placed close to the mouth or nose of a moribund person to determine, by the misting of the mirror, whether the person was still breathing. A mirror-soul link persists in the taboo on breaking a mirror, which is popularly believed to bring seven years of bad luck. In some cultures, placing the shards in running water is thought to mitigate the harm.
In Europe throughout the Middle Ages, the possession of mirrors was limited to those of great wealth or high station. Various reflecting surfaces were used: polished metallic rocks such as obsidian, pyrite, and iron; rock crystal; and an alloy of rose copper and tin, plus an alchemical brew consisting of white arsenic, red tartar, and nitre. Meanwhile, artisans explored the effects of altering the surface, from flat to concave or convex. The Dutch painter Jan van Eyck (c.1390-1441) incorporated a wall-mounted convex mirror to stunning effect in his double portrait, The Arnolfini Wedding (London, National Gallery), painted in 1434. The reflection serves not only to capture elements of the interior not otherwise in view (for example, the backsides of the couple, who face the viewer) but also to document the presence of two additional figures just visible in the reflection (one of whom is presumed to be the painter himself) as witnesses to the event taking place in the painting, which is thought to be the betrothal of the Arnolfini couple. Mirrors were subsequently included in numerous Flemish paintings, as homage to the naturalism of van Eyck, and to its capacity to replicate the surfaces of the visible world.
During the latter half of the fifteenth century, the glassmakers of Venice developed a clear, colourless glass called cristallo, which, backed with a coating of tin or mercury, provided a clearer reflection than previous mirrors. By the seventeenth century, Venice and the island of Murano were exporting mirror glass throughout Europe and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. The rage for mirrors reached an apogee in the construction of the great Hall of Mirrors at Louis XIV's palace at Versailles, completed in 1678; here the Sun King's magnificence could be endlessly reflected.
Throughout the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, numerous books carried the word mirror in their titles (much as newspapers still do today—The Daily Mirror, or the Tagesspiegel), and the mirror also acquired a certain iconographical power in the visual arts. Mirrors were employed as symbols of truth, of deception, and of vanity. In all three cases, the mirror is thought to bear a particular relation to appearances, which may or may not be deceptive. In recent times, too, much has been made of over-investment (particularly by women) in the image of oneself encountered in the mirror. Deception by mirrors has a basis in optical principles, in so far as reflections in mirrors do not correspond wholly to the objects that caused them. This can easily be demonstrated by tracing the contour of the reflection of one's head in a mirror; the reflection may correspond in proportion, but will generally be half in actual size. Moreover, mirror images are two-dimensional; bodies are not.
The craft of mirror-making has made prodigious strides since the days when the Murano glassmakers painstakingly ground and polished glass until the surface was completely smooth, or for a convex mirror (such as the one whose properties van Eyck explored) carefully cut from a blown bubble as it was hardening. While fine mirrors are still made by these methods, most mirrors are made of ‘float glass’, a ribbon of glass that is run out of the furnace along the surface of a bath of molten tin. By controlling the temperature of both elements, both surfaces can be made perfectly flat. Generally speaking, there are three types of mirrors: the plane — which has a flat surface, the convex, and the concave — the latter two known collectively as spherical mirrors, because their surfaces are usually part of a sphere. Amusement park mirrors exploit the properties of spherical mirrors, bloating or shrinking and otherwise distorting the figures reflected in them.
The invention of the reflex camera in which a mirrored surface allows one to see exactly the image that will be captured on film, was a monumental advance, as it allows for the production of photographic images that actually correspond to what is viewed through the lens of the camera. Another technological application of mirrors, in telescopes, has allowed for enormous expansion of our visual horizon. Human interest in mirrors ultimately depends on cultural and technological faith in images, and the ability to correlate our understanding of things as they are with things as they appear.
— Claudia Swan
