Rectangle after Rectangle

Squaring the scroll. Wooden writing tablet made in Byzantine Egypt, ca. 500–700 AD.
"This is about the dominance of the rectangular format in a certain tradition of picture making, a dominance that still holds today and extends well beyond the medium of painting. The book, the photographic print, the screen, and the museum—which has tended to favor this format—all guarantee that we encounter most pictures in rectangular frames. A picture that comprises figure and ground requires an enclosed field. Without an enclosure, the space around its figure(s) will not necessarily read as part of the picture; enclosure is, therefore, the originary act that gives rise to the picture but also limits it. Nothing says this enclosure needs to take the shape of a rectangle, but the history of Western art, at least, makes the rectangle look like a virtually inescapable anatomical limit. What follows are three episodes in the longue durée of this rectangle, each a moment in which the rectangular format moves into an ascendant position over one curvilinear format or another. ..."
Cabinet Magazine