cartone

Cartone is Italian for a large sheet of paper or cardboard, an augmentative of carta (paper, card), from Latin charta (leaf of papyrus), from Greek khartēs (sheet of papyrus). In Renaissance art, a cartone was a full-size preparatory drawing, used to transfer a design to a wall (for a fresco) or a tapestry (for weaving). Raphael's Cartoons — seven large-scale designs for tapestries — are among the most famous works of art in existence. They hang in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The word entered English in the sixteenth century with its Renaissance art meaning. A cartoon was a serious, large-scale preparatory drawing. The shift to humor happened in 1843, when the British magazine Punch published satirical drawings of proposed designs for the new Houses of Parliament. Punch called them 'cartoons' as a joke — comparing the politicians' grand murals to the comic drawings in the magazine. The joke stuck. By the 1860s, 'cartoon' meant a humorous drawing.

The animated cartoon followed in the twentieth century. Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908) is often cited as the first fully animated film. Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (1928) made the animated cartoon a commercial art form. By mid-century, 'cartoon' meant any animated film or television show. The Renaissance preparatory drawing had become a Saturday morning children's show.

The word now means three things: a humorous drawing in a newspaper (an editorial cartoon), an animated film or show (a cartoon), and — rarely — a preparatory drawing for a painting (an art-historical cartoon). The three meanings coexist, but most English speakers know only the first two. Raphael's Cartoons are called cartoons in a sense that has nothing to do with Mickey Mouse.