Droste effect

The Droste effect is named after the image on the tins and boxes of Droste cocoa powder which displayed a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a box with the same image, designed by Jan Misset.[2] This familiar image was introduced in 1904 and maintained for decades with slight variations from 1912 by artists including Adolphe Mouron. The poet and columnist Nico Scheepmaker introduced wider usage of the term in the late 1970s.[3]

Droste effect by image manipulation (using GIMP)

The appearance is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on.[4] Only in theory could this go on forever, as fractals do; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size.[5][6]

The Droste effect was anticipated by Giotto early in the 14th century, in his Stefaneschi Triptych. The altarpiece portrays in its centre panel Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi offering the triptych itself to St. Peter.[7] There are also several examples from medieval times of books featuring images containing the book itself or window panels in churches depicting miniature copies of the window panel itself.[8]

• 
  The early 14th century Stefaneschi Triptych. In the central panel is the kneeling figure of Cardinal Stefaneschi ...
• 
  ... who is holding the triptych itself.

The Dutch artist M. C. Escher made use of the Droste effect in his 1956 lithograph Print Gallery, which portrays a gallery containing a print which depicts the gallery, each time both reduced and rotated, but with a void at the centre of the image. The work has attracted the attention of mathematicians including Hendrik Lenstra. They devised a method of filling in the artwork's central void in an additional application of the Droste effect by successively rotating and shrinking an image of the artwork.[4][9][10]

In the 20th century, the Droste effect was used to market a variety of products. The packaging of Land O'Lakes butter featured a Native American woman holding a package of butter with a picture of herself.[4] Morton Salt similarly made use of the effect.[11] The cover of the 1969 vinyl album Ummagumma by Pink Floyd shows the band members sitting in various places, with a picture on the wall showing the same scene, but the order of the band members rotated.[12] The logo of The Laughing Cow cheese spread brand pictures a cow with earrings. On closer inspection, these are seen to be images of the circular cheese spread package, each bearing the image of the laughing cow.[4] The Droste effect is a theme in Russell Hoban's children's novel, The Mouse and His Child, appearing in the form of a label on a can of "Bonzo Dog Food" which depicts itself.[13][14]

• In advertising
• 
  Judge cover,
  19 January 1918
• 
  Liberty cover,
  10 May 1924
• 
  Royal Baking Powder, early 20th century

The Droste effect has been a motif for the cover of comic books for many years, known as an "infinity cover". Such covers were especially popular during the 1940s. Examples include Batman #8 (December 1941–January 1942), Action Comics #500 (October 1979), and Bongo Comics Free For All! (2007 ed.). Little Giant Comics #1 (July 1938) is said to be the first-published example of an infinity cover.[15]