"Many of the earliest lanterns were made in Germany in the workshops of the Nuremberg toy makers. Early allusions to projection devices can be found in Giovanni Fontana (c.1420) and Giovanni della Porta (1589), but the first printed description appears in the second edition of Ars magna lucis et umbrae by Athanasius Kircher, published in 1671. "

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n21/chloe-aridjis/at-the-swedenborg