Trompe-l'œil

Trompe-l'œil is an artistic technique that uses realistic depiction and perspective to make painted objects or spaces appear real or three-dimensional.

Linear perspective: A system for representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface through converging lines and a horizon. Converging lines make painted architecture appear to recede beyond the actual wall.
Pliny the Elder: A Roman author whose first-century encyclopedic work, Natural History, records accounts of Greek art. His account of Zeuxis and Parrhasius became a famous ancient story about painting that deceives the eye.
Camera degli Sposi: A decorated room in Mantua's Ducal Palace, painted by Andrea Mantegna in the fifteenth century. Its ceiling oculus creates a celebrated illusion of looking upward through an opening.
Mimesis: The representation or imitation of reality in art and literature. Trompe-l'œil is a particularly literal form of imitation aimed at visual deception.
Foreshortening: A technique that compresses forms in a drawing or painting to suggest that they extend toward or away from the viewer. Compressed forms can make painted objects seem to project out of their support.
Zeuxis: An ancient Greek painter, active in the late fifth century BCE, known through literary accounts of his skill. The story of his grapes deceiving birds established a lasting legend of pictorial illusion.
Palazzo Spada: A palace in Rome containing Francesco Borromini's perspective gallery, built in the seventeenth century. The gallery uses converging architecture and a rising floor to exaggerate its apparent length.
Illusionism: The creation of effects that make an image or representation seem perceptually real. Trompe-l'œil belongs to this broader practice but specifically evokes convincing painted reality.
Chiaroscuro: The use of strong contrasts between light and dark to model volume in visual art. Light and shadow give painted forms convincing volume and contact with a surface.
Parrhasius: An ancient Greek painter, active in the fifth century BCE, celebrated in classical accounts for lifelike painting. In Pliny's contest story, his painted curtain deceives Zeuxis and exposes the limits of visual judgment.

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