Art and Illusions Masterpieces of Trompe Loeil From Antiquity to Present Day
The major international exhibition Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of trompe-l'œil from antiquity to the present at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from xvi Oct 2009 to 24 January 2010 is exceptional not just for being the kickoff one to focus on the subject field in Italy but also for the extent to which it invites the visitor to explore both the fine art and the neuroscience behind the fabled illusionistic artworks on brandish.
Some 140 exhibits encompass the entire history of trompe-50'œil from classical Rome to the present solar day and, while painting predominates, the art of optical illusion is explored through other disciplines in which it has played a major function throughout European art history, including sculpture and the applied arts such as inlaid furniture, pietre dure and ceramics. It will also be notable for looking at the ways in which the senses – sight, touch, hearing, fifty-fifty smell – can exist deceived by misleading the encephalon.
The exhibition is curated by Annamaria Giusti who writes: "Fifty-fifty though the term 'trompe-50'œil' is of relatively recent coinage, fascination with optical illusion goes back to ancient times and is a recurrent theme in the history of Western art. Its roots lie in the art of classical Hellenic republic and Rome. The ancients' attitude to painting and sculpture was based on the conventionalities that fine art should exist imitative, or mimetic, and that is the criterion that paved the way for the conceptual and technical challenge of making what is in fact an illusion appear to be truthful."
The first section of the exhibition follows In the footsteps of Zeuxis and Parrhasius illustrating the origins of painterly illusionism in Greek and Roman art, in particular the famous chestnut recounted by Pliny the Elderberry of a competition between two famous Greek painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted bunches of grapes that looked so real birds pecked at them while Parrhasius deceived even the trained eye of Zeuxis himself who, when confronted with a mantle painted by Parrhasius, tried to describe it aside to see the painting which he idea lay backside information technology. The popularity of this story in the 16th and 17th centuries prompted many painters including Titian to endeavour their manus at intriguing variations on the theme.
The mimetic tradition in ancient fine art is represented by several Roman wall paintings but the main focus of the exhibition begins with the 15th century when the inspiring spirit of ancient art was reborn and the revolutionary innovation of scientific perspective was devised by theoreticians and artists in Italy. The encounter between Italian 15th century perspective and the meticulous rendering of reality that Flemish
artists were developing at the same fourth dimension led to the birth of true trompe-l'œil, a painted image intended to deceive. The Flemish masters in the belatedly 15th and early on 16th centuries were the first to adopt the nevertheless life equally a field of study for their painting and paved the style for the popularity and spread of a genre that was to achieve new heights in the 17th century.
When does naturalism in painting cross over into optical deception? Even so Life or Trompe-fifty'œil? attempts to answer by juxtaposing pictures of similar subjects from both perspectives. A classic 17th century yet life with fruit is hung beside 1 painted by Cornelis Gijsbrechts, a 17th century Flemish painter who was a primary in the art of deceptive painting. His canvas with its still life is not the discipline of the painting, information technology is in the painting itself, where nosotros see information technology hanging on a wall in the artist'south studio, a corner of the canvass peeling away from its frame.
In the section Exterior and Inside the Painting, the artists probe the ambiguity of the relationship betwixt painted and existent space. The painting 'absorbs' existent accessories from the space effectually it such as the paper it is wrapped in or the picture frame, every bit seen in a panel by Francesco del Cossa (c.1435-c.1477). In a still life with birds by the Flemish painter Michael Bechtel, the characterization with its caption has get part of the picture. St Marking the Evangelist by Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506) is one of the very beginning instances of this technique and four centuries later the distraught-looking male child painted by Catalan artist Pere Borrell del Caso in 1874 is clutching the frame every bit though he were trying to escape from the canvass.
The next department is devoted to Wunderkammer: the Chiffonier of Curiosities, cabinets that open their illusory inner spaces to hold everyday objects or sophisticated collections of objets d'art and natural curiosities. These include a masterpiece of the genre, a painting of the scarabattolo or glass cabinet which belonged to Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici. Painted in Florence in the second half of the 17th century past Domenico Remps, it depicts both naturalia and artificialia from the Medici collections. Some of these objects have been traced and are likewise on prove in the exhibition including a bizarre skull with coral branches and various turned ivory objects on loan from the Museo degli Argenti.
Just every bit trompe-l'œil objects can be stored away in cupboards or cabinets, they can hang on the wall as they would in real life. This is another of the more mutual themes in trompe-l'œil art which began with the wall decorations in the Roman domus. The section entitled Suspended Betwixt Reality and Illusion explores this genre, showing false walls or doors from which hang the sumptuous accessories of court life, or the more small accoutrements of everyday working life. Cabinets and hooked panels with objects hanging from them continued to exam the skill of artists throughout the centuries, actualization in more than everyday versions, many of them tinged with irony, by painters of the American school in the tardily 19th century. Their number includes such masters as John Frederick Peto, William Harnett and John Haberle and the exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to view their work in Europe. A deliberate provocation and a masterly piece of deception is the cabinet painted by French realist creative person Henri Cadiou (1906-1989) who counters the composure of his 17th century forerunners and the bourgeois self-possession of his 19th century predecessors with the proletarian reality of the cabinet/wardrobe of a labourer, whose objet d'fine art is a pivot-upwardly.
Equally far back equally the 15th century, painters were fond of depicting paper objects hanging on walls. Indeed the theme enjoyed such currency that a whole section entitled Playing with Cards has been devoted to it. Letters, bills, folders, etchings, printed sheets and playing cards lend themselves to imaginative combinations and simulations not but in paintings simply likewise in tables in wood, scagliola or semi-precious stones portraying an assortment of papers and documents lying on them to trick the viewer who is prompted to attain out and seize objects that cannot be grasped.
In the section entitled Domestic Mirages, the ultimate illusional challenge of portraying people and animals is addressed. Two-dimensional Sculpture identifies another thematic vein in illusionistic painting. Over the centuries, artists have used monochome figures painted on canvas or wood to deceive the viewer into thinking that he is looking at sculptures or marble bas-reliefs.
The largest section of the exhibition Cocky-Portrait of an Illusion is devoted to easel painting, the ultimate art of deception. There are still lifes showing the tools of the painter'due south merchandise in keeping with the laws of illusory artifice and more explicit vanitates where, amid the brushes and palettes, we tin perceive skulls which are sometimes direct displayed by the artists in their trompe-l'œil self-portraits. In reflecting on its own nature, painting smugly enjoys its ability to deceive but at the same time strikes a notation of regret over the vanity of mere appearances. The frequency with which the theme of an empty framed pic or one seen from behind occurs from the 17th century onwards is very telling.
Beguiling Reading is a pocket-size section devoted to the illusionistic event of ornamentation in manuscripts and the theme of the manuscript per se. This is exemplified by a 15th century painting that opens the pages of an illuminated codex and a wooden choir lectern with an inlaid choir book open and ready for the choristers to take up their positions.
Three-dimensional Deception comprises sculptures and objects which share a penchant for camouflage. They include the hyper-realism of wax portraits of members of the aristocracy in all their finery, a stylish genre up to the 19th century, and the plastic 'humanoids' of contemporary American sculptors as well as the anatomical and botanical wax sculptures devised under the Enlightenment for teaching purposes and the playful bamboozlement of containers shaped to resemble their contents, fashionable in the golden age of European porcelain.
The section called Materials in Disguise presents a pick of these marvels. Sumptuous embroidered silk altar frontals are actually made of scagliola gypsum, stone slippers are equally tantalising as they would be uncomfortable to wearable, and rustic wooden buckets are as fragile equally the porcelain from which they are made. Starting with classical Roman sculptures that use the natural colours of stone to imitate bronze or folds of cloth, the display also includes subsequently pieces of porcelain that appear to exist carved out of wood, and leather tiles carved in rock.
The exhibition ends with a section entitled Architectural Illusion. While architecture played a crucial and spectacular role in the fine art of 'deception', information technology can only exist briefly evoked in this exhibition. A detached fresco in which the wall has been 'erased', offer a view onto lush gardens, represents a class of illusionistic decoration that originated in Rome and was backside every subsequent development in the genre. It is echoed by several detached Baroque frescoes, big-scale sketches and mock-ups for the decoration of indoor areas as well as the absorbing experiments of a number of contemporary artists.
The scientific role of the exhibition will be curated by Richard Gregory CBE, a neuropsychologist and the founder of the first interactive scientific heart in England, who has devised a special scientific visit for families and children with the cooperation of Priscilla Heard of Bristol University. Besides as special family and children's labelling there is a 'Sorcerer's Hatbox' with a wide multifariousness of activities including shut-upward magic, visual illusions and carte du jour tricks. Hands-on exhibits allow visitors to explore illusions of all kinds – an Ames Room, distorting mirrors, holograms and other interactive perception exhibits – likewise every bit the neuroscience backside them (separate press release available).
Never before has a major fine art exhibition, which includes works by the great masters Titian, Velásquez and Mantegna, invited visitors of all ages to explore the ways in which the human brain can be fooled, and the pleasance we proceeds from beingness taken in.
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Location: Palazzo Strozzi
Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze (Florence), Italy
Tel. +39 055 2645155 www.palazzostrozzi.org
Promoted and produced by: Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Soprintendenza per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico due east per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze
With the support of: Provincia di Firenze
Comune di Firenze
Camera di Commercio di Firenze
Associazione Partners Palazzo Strozzi
Curator: Annamaria Giusti, manager of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Palazzo Pitti
Catalogue: Mandragora, Press Office: Elena Paoletti
T. +39 055 2654384/xix, ufficiostampa@mandragora.it
Opening hours: Daily 09.00 to twenty.00, Th 09.00 to 23.00
Concluding admission 1 hour prior to endmost
Access: Adults: €10.00; concessions: €eight.50, €viii.00, €7.50; schools: €4.00
Booking: Sigma CSC, tel +39 055 2469600, fax +39 055 244145,
prenotazioni@cscsigma.it; or via www.palazzostrozzi.org
How to go at that place: By aeroplane: Firenze Airport www.aeroporto.firenze.it
Tel. +39 055 306 1700
By motorcar: From north (Milan) A1 Bologna, Firenze, Firenze Nord exit, follow directions for city. From south (Rome) A1 Roma, Milano, Firenze Sud get out, follow directions for metropolis
By train: Nearest stations are Stazione di Santa Maria Novella, Piazza del Duomo, Via Tornabuoni
Access: Lifts and wheelchair access to all areas
For farther information and images, please contact:
Sue Bond Public Relations
Tel. +44 (0)1359 271085, Fax. +44 (0)1359 271934
Electronic mail. info@suebond.co.uk, world wide web.suebond.co.great britain
Opening hours: Daily 09.00 to 20.00, Thursday 09.00 to 23.00
Last access one hr prior to endmost
Admission: Adults: €x.00; concessions: €8.50, €8.00, €vii.l; schools: €four.00
Booking: Sigma CSC, tel +39 055 2469600, fax +39 055 244145,
prenotazioni@cscsigma.it; or via www.palazzostrozzi.org
How to become there: By plane: Firenze Airport www.aeroporto.firenze.it
Tel. +39 055 306 1700
By car: From north (Milan) A1 Bologna, Firenze, Firenze Nord exit, follow directions for urban center. From south (Rome) A1 Roma, Milano, Firenze Sud exit, follow directions for city
Past railroad train: Nearest stations are Stazione di Santa Maria Novella, Piazza del Duomo, Via Tornabuoni
Access: Lifts and wheelchair admission to all areas
For farther information and images, delight contact:
Sue Bail Public Relations
Tel. +44 (0)1359 271085, Fax. +44 (0)1359 271934
E-post. info@suebond.co.uk, www.suebond.co.uk
twenty/10/2009
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Source: https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/art-and-illusions-masterpieces-of-trompe-l%E2%80%99oeil-from-antiquity-to-the-present
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