Art: Cyclorama

In the Pantheon de la Guerre in Paris there was an operation a month ago. A pair of silver shears, now glorified as relics, cut down the world's largest painting on canvas—a cyclorama, 400 feet long, at which tourists have stared for eight years. On it is a pictorial history of the World War— cannon and weeping mothers in black, plunging airplanes and statesmen—a gigantic optical illusion as seen from the centre of the circular temple. Parts of it are painfully real. There are 6,000 figures, the creations of 22 artists, whose...