in front of them. This was an imaginative illustration of ideas about (false or limited) the relations between knowledge, education and a truthful understanding of reality. Plato compared a wall that screens off the people who carry the figures to the kind of partitions used by puppet (marionette) players to hide behind. Apparently, there was no existing form of shadow theatre known in ancient Greece that Socrates/Plato could refer to. Shadow plays started spreading throughout Europe at the end of the 17th century, probably via Italy. It is known that several Italian showmen performed in Germany, France and England during this period. In 1675 German polymath and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz imagined a kind of world exhibition that would show all kinds of new inventions and spectacles. In a handwritten document he supposed it should include shadow theatre. French missionaries brought the shadow show from China to France in 1767 and put on performances in Paris and Marseilles, causing quite a stir. In time, the ombres chinoises (French for "Chinese shadows") with local modification and embellishment, became the ombres françaises and struck root in the country. The popularity of ombres chinoises reflected the chinoiserie fashion of the days. French showman François Dominique Séraphin first presented his shadow spectacle in a hôtel particulier in Versailles in 1771. He would go on to perform at the Palace of Versailles in front of royalty. In 1784 Séraphin moved to Paris, performing his shows at his permanent theatre in the newly opened Palais-Royal from 8 September 1784. The performances would adapt to the political changes and survived the French Revolution. Séraphin developed the use of clockwork mechanisms to automate the show. His nephew took over the show after Séraphin's death in 1800 and it was continued by his heirs until the theatre closed in 1870. In 1775, Ambrogio (also known as Ambroise and Ambrose) staged ambitious shows in Paris and London. The art was a popular entertainment in Paris during the 19th century, especially in the famous Paris nightclub district of Montmartre. The cabaret Le Chat noir ("The Black Cat") produced 45 Théatre d'ombres shows between 1885 and 1896 under the management of Rodolphe Salis. Behind a screen on the second floor of the establishment, the artist Henri Rivière worked with up to 20 assistants in a large, oxy-hydrogen back-lit performance area and used a double optical lantern to project backgrounds. Figures were originally