Trompe L'oeil History In Painting
- Became a type of painting with a name in the Baroque Period (late 16th to early 18th century)
- Used as a method of wall painting frescoes in as early as ancient Roman empire, where a mural might depict a window, door or hallway.
Mural from Pompeii, c.70 AD
- According to the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, Zeuxis and his contemporary Parrhasius (of Ephesus and later Athens) staged a contest to determine the greater artist. When Zeuxis unveiled his painting of grapes, they appeared so real birds flew down to peck at them. But when Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to pull aside the curtain from his painting, the curtain itself turned out to be a painted illusion. Parrhasius won, and Zeuxis admitted, 'I have deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis.'
- This naturally had an appeal to the Baroque, since they loved all things ancient.
- With the superior understanding of perspective achieved in the Renaissance (14th to 17th centuries), illusionistic ceiling paintings were in vogue
Di sotto in sù (from below, upward).
- Several Renaissance painters (Carpaccio, Barbari) liked to add trompe l'oeil features to their paintings, things like:
A fly sitting
on the
picture frame
Parhassius-style
curtain
across
the picture
Another curtain
across
the picture
Jan Van Eyck
The Annuciation Diptych
1433-35
Paintings of stone statues
Detail
A piece
of paper
attached
to a
board
The back
of the
canvas
- All in reference to the contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius
- The practice continues and gains its French moniker, trompe l'oeil, in the Baroque period (1590-1725)
- A special form of Trompe l'oeil from the same period is known as quodlibet (kwad'•li•bay) [which also is a kind of fanciful medley of tunes or musical pieces]
.jpg "Otis Kaye, The American Dream")
