At first, the painting above looks like many you’ve seen before. A grand, naval scene with clouds billowing above inflated sails. But hang on. What’s that in the bottom corner? A crumpled note of some kind. A little flourish from the artist\u00a0telling you which ship is which. It’s just one\u00a0example of a\u00a0trompe l\u2019oeil,<\/em>\u00a0meaning to\u00a0‘deceive the eye’ when translated from the French. It’s an artistic trick turning two dimensions into three. Art history is full of them –\u00a0from banquet\u00a0tables groaning with delicacies good enough to reach out and eat, to wallpaper that beckons\u00a0you down a phantom corridor. Fittingly for an optical trick, the\u00a0trompe l\u2019oeil<\/em>\u00a0can take all shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n Like many great inventions, the\u00a0trompe l\u2019oeil<\/em>\u00a0started out\u00a0with a competition. Two painters,\u00a0Zeuxis and Parrhasius<\/a>, came head to head in ancient Greece, both eager\u00a0to prove they were the superior artist. Their challenge? To paint the most deceptively life-like work of art. Zeuxis was up first, and painted some grapes so juicily real birds flew down to steal them. Parrhasius went next. He invited Zeuxis to unveil his rival work. When Zeuxis went to draw the curtain aside, he realised he had been beaten. The curtain was merely an illusion.<\/p>\n Since then, artists, engravers and illustrators have revelled in fooling their viewers with this clever effect, playing with perspective to blur the boundary between the real and the\u00a0fake. Below, we’ve picked some of the more elaborate\u00a0trompe l’oeil<\/em>\u00a0from our collections – did any of them fool you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"