Art briefly explained: What is trompe-l’oeil?

Today, I'm continuing my blog series “Art Explained”.

What's it about? In exhibition texts, image descriptions, books and even in my own articles, technical terms such as sfumato, pentimento and grisaille crop up time and again. These terms often originate from Italian or French, as these were long considered the languages of art and, to some extent, still are today.

I have set myself the goal of explaining these terms one by one. Art must be accessible to everyone. That starts with language. But it also helps me to organise my knowledge and make it accessible to myself by not simply using vague technical terms, but by formulating exactly what I mean. This time, we're talking about trompe-l'oeil.

What is a Trompe-l'oeil?

The term trompe-l'oeil literally means ‘deceive the eye’. And that is exactly what it is. A painting that is deliberately painted to deceive the eye. The subject matter should appear to be a real, physical object and not a painting. It is not about painting realistically, at least not only. It is about optical illusion. At first glance, the eye should believe that it is seeing real letters on a wooden board (as in the cover image (Office Board by John F Peto)), or a frame, a padlock, a niche.

To achieve this, trompe-l'oeil artists work with extreme precision, using light and shadow, the illusion of material surfaces (wood grain, paper edges, fabric folds, metal sheen) and very clear spatiality. Typically, objects are painted as if they were lying on the painting surface or protruding from it. A letter fastened with a nail, a piece of paper with a corner that appears to be bent. It often seems as if the painting itself is an everyday object – a notice board, the back of a painting, a drawer, a window.

A trompe-l'oeil is the deliberate staging of the boundary between image and reality. The image pretends not to be an image.

The Heyday of Trompe-l'oeil

The idea of painting a picture in such a way that it is believed to be real is almost as old as Western art itself.

The earliest examples can be found in Roman wall paintings. In Pompeii and Herculaneum, walls were designed to appear to show windows, protruding marble slabs or architectural niches, where in reality there was only plaster. These illusionary spaces were astonishingly sophisticated, and the artists deliberately played with perception.

In ancient art literature, there is a famous anecdote attributed to Pliny the Elder.
Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two famous Greek painters, competed against each other. They wanted to prove which of them was the better illusionist. Zeuxis painted grapes that looked so convincing that birds flew in to peck at them. He was sure of his victory and asked Parrhasios to finally reveal his work. Parrhasios asked Zeuxis to pull the curtain aside, revealing that the curtain was painted. Zeuxis is said to have replied that he had deceived nature, but Parrhasios had deceived an artist.

Since then, many artists have referred to this story. There are countless works of art in which a new space opens up behind a curtain that has been pulled back.

But trompe-l'oeil experienced its heyday during the Baroque period. At that time, art was designed to impress and overwhelm. Illusion, appearance, and reality played a central role, not only in painting, but also in architecture and theatre. In churches, ceilings were painted in such a way that they appeared to open upwards, figures seemed to float, and entire rooms appeared larger.

However, trompe-l'oeil was not at its strongest in Italian Baroque, but in the northern Netherlands. Two things came together there: a great appreciation for detailed still lifes, and a Protestant culture in which religious images had become less common. Artists focused more on everyday objects, materials, and precision – ideal conditions for illusionistic effects.

Why French, of all Languages?

The idea originated more or less in Greece and the Roman Empire, the heyday took place in the Netherlands, but the term is French? Why is that?

It was coined in the 17th century. By this time, Italy had long since lost its power. Global trade routes had shifted. Atlantic trade (Spain, Portugal, later the Netherlands and England) became more important than Mediterranean trade. As a result, Venice lost much of its importance. The balance of power in Europe shifted. France, Spain and later the Habsburg Empire became centralised great powers. Italy, on the other hand, remained a fragmented mosaic of city-states, principalities and republics. It was unable to defend itself against external intervention. The Italian Wars (from 1494) were devastating.

Artists still travelled to Italy to learn from the old masters, but art follows power, because large commissions, prestigious projects and resources migrate to where the political centres are.

In practice, i.e. in painting and sculpture itself, Italy remained the leader well into the 17th century. However, linguistic and theoretical interpretative authority slowly shifted to France.
And so the term originated in the milieu of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, where art criticism, theory, and terminology set the tone throughout Europe.

At that time, France was the cultural centre that systematically recorded and disseminated terms. Art writers and theorists described such illusionistic effects with the expression trompe-l’Œil, and because this term was extremely precise and clearly formulated the intention to deceive, it was adopted by other countries.

19th Century: USA

In the 19th century, trompe-l'oeil experienced a second heyday in the United States. From the 1870s onwards, a group of painters developed who specialised in illusionistic still lifes with great precision. The best-known names are William Michael Harnett, John F. Peto and John Haberle. They adopted the trompe-l'oeil principle of Dutch Baroque painting, but translated it into a different visual world: no Baroque curtain tricks, but objects from everyday American life. These included pinboards, instruments, newspapers, receipts, books, tobacco tins and workshop utensils. Things that came from everyday life.

There was a growing middle class that was interested in technically impressive but not symbolically overloaded images. Trompe-l'oeil fit well into this culture because it showcased skills and had a certain playfulness without violating moral expectations. At the same time, it remained ‘clean’ and technically clear, which appealed to many American collectors.

Escaping Criticism

When writing about trompe-l'oeil, one of the most famous works cannot be overlooked. ‘Escaping Criticism’ (1874) by Pere Borrell del Caso uses an effect that works immediately – even on people who otherwise rarely look at art. The boy, who appears to be climbing over the frame, creates a very direct, almost theatrical moment of deception. This makes it extremely memorable.

In terms of art history, Dutch Baroque works belong to the ‘classical canon’, but this Spanish painting is one of the works that defines the genre for a broad audience, even though it was not particularly famous at the time of its creation.

The frame is part of the picture's effect: the transition between ‘painting space’ and ‘real space’ is staged. The boy's gaze seems directed outwards, as if he wants to move into the world outside the painting. Little is known for certain about the artist's exact intention. Some art historians suspect that the work could be a kind of criticism of conservative art criticism. The title naturally suggests this conclusion.

From the Screen to the City

Nowadays, it is rare to find modern trompe-l'oeil in the historical sense in museums and galleries, but there are many works that take the principle further, playing with reality, surface, and perception.

Trompe-l'oeil is particularly powerful in public spaces because it plays with architecture and the cityscape. Houses are given apparent balconies, windows, openwork walls or entire façades that ‘open up’. This mural art is often large-scale, technically very clean, and exploits the effect of extending the painted space into the real city. In many cities, this is a deliberately used design element to visually enliven dreary or closed façades or to create historical references. It is particularly widespread in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, and the USA.

But contemporary art also knows other forms of trompe-l'oeil. In street art, artists such as Julian Beever and Edgar Müller work with chalk drawings that only appear three-dimensional from a certain angle. These are essentially modern anamorphoses, a related form of illusion. Other artists apply the principle to objects. They paint everyday objects in such a way that they appear to be something else, or they create sculptures that look like two-dimensional drawings.

In addition, there is also a more experimental approach in contemporary art, for example when artists paint hyperrealistic still lifes that deliberately recall Baroque trompe-l'oeil motifs, but fill them with contemporary objects – packaging, newspaper pages, digital devices. Painting takes up the old principle, but plays with contemporary viewing habits.

Trompe-l'oeil has evolved from a clearly defined genre into an open concept that appears wherever the appeal of deception is at stake. Façade painting is only the most visible form of this.