Trompe-l'œil (French: "trick the eye") is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three-dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting.
Although the phrase has its origin in the Baroque period, when it refers to perspectival illusionism, use of trompe-l'œil dates back much further. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical trompe-l'œil mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room.
A version of an oft-told ancient Greek story concerns a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis produced a still life painting so convincing, that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. He was then asked by his rival, Parrhasius, to pull back a pair of very tattered curtains in order to see the painting behind them. Parrhasius won the contest, as his painting was the curtains themselves.
With the superior understanding of perspective drawing achieved in the Renaissance, Italian painters of the late 15th century began painting illusionistic ceiling paintings, generally in fresco, that employed perspective and techniques such as foreshortening in order to give the impression of greater space to the viewer below.
Perspective theories in the 17th-century allowed a more fully integrated approach to architectural illusion, which when used by painters to "open up" the space of a wall or ceiling is known as quadratura.
A fanciful form of architectural Trompe-l'œil is known as quodlibet which features realistically rendered paintings of such items as paper-knives, playing-cards, ribbons and scissors, apparently accidentally left lying around, painted on walls.
Trivia - George Washington was once fooled by a trompe-l'œil painting when he visited the studio of Charles Willson Peale. Upon entering a room containing on its far wall such a painting of someone descending a stair (apparently into the room), he is said to have bowed to the figure before he realized it was a painting. The painting, Staircase Group showed two of Peale's sons.
Trompe-l'œil can also be found painted on tables and other items of furniture, on which, for example, a deck of playing cards might appear to be sitting on the table.
In the 20th century, from the 1960s on, large trompe-l'œil murals began to appear on the sides of city buildings, and trompe-l'œil became increasingly popular for interior murals as well.
