Mise en abyme

Mise en abyme (French pronunciation: [miz‿ɑ̃n‿abim]; also mise en abîme) is a term originally from the French and means "placed into abyss".

The commonplace usage of this phrase is describing the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image, but it has several other meanings in the realm of the creative arts and literary theory. In Western art history, "mise en abyme" is a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, the sequence appearing to recur infinitely.

[From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_abyme]


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Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor) (1656) Pictures, Images and Photos

Velasquez's "The Maids of Honor" (1656)
[From Photobucket]

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