What Kind of Art Seems So Real That It fools the Eye?

PARRHASIUS, it is said, entered into a pictorial contest with Zeuxis, who represented some grapes, painted and then naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. Parrhasius, on the other mitt, exhibited a drape, fatigued with such atypical truthfulness, that Zeuxis, elated with the judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, haughtily demanded that the curtain should be fatigued aside to let the motion picture be seen. Upon finding his error, with a not bad degree of ingenuous candour he admitted that he had been surpassed, for that whereas he himself had only deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist. - Pliny the Elder, The Natural History (circa 77 CE), Book 35, Chapter 36.

THE ability totrompe-l'œil ("deceive the eye" in French) was among the virtually highly prized creative skills of Pliny'south day, as evidenced by the many tales of Greek and Roman painters who boasted that their works were capable of fooling both homo and beast. Although almost figurative paintings offer an illusionistic "window" into a fake reality to some caste, trompe-l'œil works have such verisimilitude to the level of optical illusion. The technique has been called a "triumph of the gaze over the eye."

My favorite examples of trompe-l'œil come from the Renaissance and Baroque periods (roughly speaking c. 1500 to c. 1700). European culture of this era displayed a strong fascination with the interplay betwixt the cute and the hideous, the hush-hush and the visible, and the concept of truth. In the arts, these preoccupations were expressed through masks, stage plays (whose actors often functioned equally a metaphor for life in seventeenth-century poesy), and the mask-similar, mysterious figures of Mannerist painters, virtually famously exemplified in the vivid and vaguely creepy works of Agnolo Bronzino.

It is not surprising, so, that paintings which expressly sought to fool the middle (and the heed) past experimenting with the boundaries betwixt the bogus and the real enjoyed a high level of popularity throughout the 1500 through 1700 period -- nor that these works could role as profound reflections on the nature of visible reality rather than every bit clever but gimmicky visual tricks, which is how we tend to arroyo trompe-l'œil today. Beneath are some of my favorite examples.

Domenico Remps, A Chiffonier of Marvel, 1690s.

I included this painting in an earlier mail service on curiosity cabinets, but wanted to revisit information technology here to evidence Remps' incredible ability to evoke illusionistic details. Notice, for instance, the reflection of the mirror in the upper left part of the cabinet, which, much like January van Eyck's famous Arnolfini Wedding, reveals the room in which it was painted:

Fifty-fifty as Remps points out the artificial nature of the painting by revealing the site of its creation, notwithstanding, he too creates the illusion that an actual curiosity cabinet (rather than its mere representation on canvas) stands before u.s.a.. This photo-realistic effect is achieved by clever touches such as the broken glass on the right paw chiffonier window.

Portraying paintings within a painting, every bit Remps does here, was an extremely popular arroyo -- I suppose because it highlighted the painter'southward skill in multiple genres while besides maximizing the visual delight of the viewer by offering several vistas and scenes at once (modern tastes tend to be more than minimalist, but the seventeenth century was all about maximalism). The ultimate example of this that I have seen is David Tenier'due south incredibly over-the-top delineation of Archduke Leopold Wilhem's gallery:

David Teniers the Younger, ca. 1650, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Another typical approach of the menstruum which I find to be in many means more than interesting was that of including written texts in paintings. This technique is actually visible in a surprisingly large number of famous works (for instance, in Hans Holbein's famous portrait of a High german merchant). It reached an farthermost grade, nonetheless, in paintings such equally the following:

Jean-François de Le Motte, c. 1670, Withal Life,Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon.

A particular of the texts, which include a letter to the artist, a printed pamphlet and what appears to exist an accounting
notebook.

Cornelius Gijsbrechts (c.1630 - 1675), Trompe l'oeil, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Gent, Kingdom of belgium.

 Edward (or Edvart) Collier, Trompe l'Oeil of Newspapers, Messages and Writing Implements
on a Wooden Board (1699)

Incidentally, this last work offers a fascinating glimpse into the origins of the modern paper. One of the early on "intelligencers" depicted here, the Apollo Anglicanus, can be previewed on Google Books. (Check out the blog Merciurius Politicus for more than along these lines).
One interesting case of a painting of an illuminated manuscript can be establish on Palazo Strozzi's online exhibit of trompe l'œil works:

Detail showing early sheet music of a psalm.

Finally, there is the related style of "quadratura," or painting architectural objects in an illusionistic fashion. Peradventure the well-nigh famous example of this is Andrea Mantegna'southward playful and highly original ceiling fresco for the the Ducal Palace in Mantua, Italy, a particular from which heads this post:

Andrea Mantegna, fresco, Camera degli Sposi, Ducal Palace, Mantua, c. 1470.

An even more interesting off-shoot is anamorphosis, which employs distorted perspective to create coded images that just get understandable when viewed from the right angle. The most famous example of anamorphosis is to exist found in Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors(one of my favorite paintings), where a strange blur at the bottom of the painting...

...revolves into a skull when viewed from the correct angle, designed to remind the viewer of the ever-presence of death:

I'll cease there. For those interested in learning more, the Palazzo Strozzi museum in Florence has an online exhibit on trompe fifty'œil with many beautiful images and some interesting thoughts on the subject.

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Source: https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2011/10/art-of-fooling-eye.html

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