In French, trompe l’oeil means “trick the eye.” It refers to two-dimensional imagery that appears to be three-dimensional. A familiar example may be M.C. Escher’s lithograph Drawing Hands, which shows two hands sketching themselves. The concept of trompe l’oeil dates back to an ancient story of a contest to determine the superiority of two painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted grapes so realistic that birds flew down to peck at them. Parrhasius asked his rival to pull aside a curtain to reveal his work, only to shock onlookers with the revelation that the curtain was his painting.

With the advent of painted perspective, trompe l’oeil paintings flourished over Europe beginning in the late 1400s. In Renaissance Italy, artists painted illusionistic ceiling frescoes that appear to open to the sky. One such fresco is Correggio’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Parma Cathedral, which shows the Virgin Mary apparently ascending to the heavens through rings of clouds. Dutch artists in the seventeenth century created fanciful trompe l’oeil still life paintings of everyday objects attached to walls with straps of leather. Following this tradition, trompe l’oeil paintings became very popular in the United States in the nineteenth century. Artists like William Harnett painted elaborate tableaux, often showing items hanging on a painted wooden background, which appeared real to an undiscerning observer. Contemporary American artists continue to use trompe l’oeil techniques to create whimsical works of art.