This chapter defines the gaze of modernity, a way of seeing and understanding the world that began during the Renaissance and continued during the Cold War in Latin America. It presents three key moments in the development of this gaze: Brunelleschi's invention of perspectiva artificialis in the 1400s, and its multifaceted consequences in the arts and sciences. Bentham's notion of panopticon in 1787, and its connection to the concept of surveillance. Robert Barker's creation also in 1787, the panorama. Finally, the chapter examines the relevance of the archive in theoretical terms, highlighting the connections to the panopticon and panorama, and discussing some of the archive's fundamental contradictions.

In the nineteenth century, visual culture became noted for spectacles such as panoramas, which sought to create an experience that offered more than simply viewing an engraving or a framed painting. The panorama placed the spectator at the centre of a circle, surrounded by a huge painting on a curved surface. This chapter focuses on the Arctic panorama Summer and Winter Views of the Polar Regions (1850) that opened in London in 1850. The chapter explains how a radically transformed Arctic was presented to a metropolitan audience, which anticipated education, entertainment, and an aesthetic experience at Leicester Square, London. Summer and Winter Views was based on the drawings of a recently returned officer, William Henry Browne, and made claims of authenticity in a competitive market. By closely reading the sources available for the panorama, including sketches, contemporary reviews, and prints, it argues that this affordable and persuasive spectacle of ‘savage horrors’ transformed the Arctic into a supernatural space of well-executed, yet sensationalistic, Gothic icescapes, masculine endeavour, and exotic meteorological effects.