Illusions of Renaissance Art

Illusion

Brunelleschi's Peepshow (No, it's not what you think!)

Filippo Brunelleschi used his training as a gold smith to apply a silver background on a painted panel, allowing the color of the sky and passing clouds to become part of the painting as seen by the viewer. This was an attempt at a perspective painting and interactive art. The panel was constructed with a hole at the vanishing point. The reflection of the image was viewed in a mirror through the hole, giving an illusion of depth.

van Hoogstraten's Peepshow Box

Samuel van Hoogstraten, a "Trompe l' oeil" artist, expanded upon Brunelleschi's peepshow and created a series of peepshow boxes. The boxes were constructed of wood with one side missing to allow light to enter. Small holes were made to view the panels. "Real space" equaled "painted space" because the viewer's line of sight was limited and opposite the vanishing point. As demonstrated by the dog, images had to be distorted on different panels to maintain the illusion of depth.

Anamorphic images

An anamorphic image is a distorted image that only looks right when viewed from a specfifc angle or with the use of a device. Anamorphic images which had spiritual or religious meanings were often "hidden" in paintings. Anamorphic images were the ancestors of "curvilinear" pictures, which are distorted around a cylinder and can only be properly seen in a mirrored cylinder.

Pozzo's Church of St. Ignazio

The dome and vault of the Church of St. Ignazio, painted by Andrea Pozzo, represented the pinnacle of illusion. Due to complaints of blocked light by neighboring monks, Pozzo was commisioned to paint the inside of a dome instead of constructing one. However, because it was flat, there was only one spot where the illusion was perfect and the dome looked real. The vault, or main ceiling of the church, was also painted by Pozzo. It was painted with a single vanishing point in the center of the ceiling, where the Son of God and the heavens reside. This has the effect of drawing a person's vision from the active surroundings to Jesus, the central focus of the piece. Once again, the perspective was so precise that the Vault was meant to be viewed from a single spot. When positioned at that spot, the ceiling appeared to dissolve away and the church walls seemed to literally stretch into heaven. However, if viewed from a different spot, the picture seemed impossible; pillars appear to stretch at odd angles, people are leaning off edges at impossible postures, and figures appeared distorted. To mark where the dome and vault were to be viewed, two gold discs were installed on the floor at the proper points.

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