It is engaging to read your review of Anish Kapoor’s show at the Royal Academy of Art (“Bringing Beauty and Beast into the Drawing Room,” September 26, 2009). You are quite enraptured by the first sculpture on view, “Tall Tree and the Eye,” which stands in the middle of the academy’s handsome courtyard. Made of seventy-six highly-polished stainless-steel balls a meter across each, it reflects the viewer, the courtyard, the sky, and itself many times over. But you fail to mention that spherical mirrors have enthralled artists for quite a few centuries. Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) comes first to mind with “The Arnolfini Wedding” (1434), which is graced with a convex mirror that reflects the tiny artist himself. Closer to our era, M.C. Escher (1898-1972) is there with his many self-portraits reflected in hand-held spherical mirrors. Among the living artists of note, Gerhard Richter has experimented with spherical mirrors for a long while. As for your small quibble, that Kapoor’s spheres could have been a bit bigger, just consider the Pepsi pavilion for the Expo ’70, where a ninety-foot spherical mirror made of Mylar delighted the crowds for months. No matter how engaging Kapoor’s appropriation may be in spite of its garish title, it is old hat all the same.