Although it has existed for quite some time, it is doubtful people knew what recursion was. It did exist in paintings as Mise en abyne, which essentially means “placed into abyss”. Here an image contains a smaller copy of itself, in a sequence which is appearing to recurse infinitely. The Droste effect is a term for a specific kind of recursive picture. It is derived from the image found on tins and boxes of Dutch Droste cocoa powder. A picture exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. The classic Droste image shows a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot cocoa, and a cocoa box with the same image, introduced in 1904. Various examples of the Droste effect used in advertising are shown below.
The Craft of Coding 