None of these people took the reading. The record of each shows the shape.
Giorgio Morandi (1890 to 1964)
From 1910 until his death in 1964, Giorgio Morandi lived on Via Fondazza in Bologna with his family, painted the bottles, bowls and boxes he kept in his room there, and did not visit Paris until 1956. One street, one city and a few ordinary objects, returned to for more than fifty years, show the shape from outside.
Sources: bolognawelcome.com, en.wikipedia.org
Candide (fiction)
At the end of Voltaire's Candide (1759), after wars, shipwrecks and losses across Europe and South America, Candide settles with his friends on a small farm near Constantinople and answers his tutor's last grand theory with "let us cultivate our garden." An ending that chooses a small piece of ground and the daily work of keeping it over every larger scheme shows the shape from outside.
Source: gutenberg.org