French: "deceives the eye." Hyper-realistic painting that convinces viewers a depicted object physically exists on or beyond the painted surface. Ranges from ancient mosaics to 17th-century curtain paintings.

An image deliberately distorted so it only resolves into readable form from one specific viewing angle, or via a cylindrical or conical mirror. The distortion is the message: normal perspective is revealed as arbitrary.

Illusionistic ceiling painting that extends real architecture upward into fictive painted space — columns, arches, entablatures, open sky — making a solid ceiling appear to dissolve into heaven or open air.

Geometric patterns engineered to generate perceptual effects — motion, vibration, depth, flicker — on absolutely static surfaces. The effect is neurological, not aesthetic preference: certain patterns trigger specific retinal responses.

Patrick Hughes' invention: a 3D sculptural relief where the physically nearest surface is painted as the farthest receding point. Moving the viewer inverts normal perspective — the "far" wall rushes toward you.

Two entirely different images share identical forms. The viewer cannot perceive both simultaneously — the mind switches between readings. Ranges from ancient figure-ground reversal to Dalí's paranoiac-critical paintings.

Leonardo's technique of eliminating hard outlines in favour of blurred, smoky transitions between form and atmosphere. Combined with aerial perspective, it creates an illusion of ambient depth that no prior technique had achieved.

Ancient mosaic convention depicting unswept floor debris — food scraps, fish bones, shells, nutshells — as if scattered on a dining room floor. The world's oldest trompe-l'œil genre; the joke is that the mess is indestructible.

A wooden box painted on interior surfaces with domestic or landscape scenes. Perspective is calculated so that peering through a small hole at one end presents a complete convincing interior — a private theatre of depth.

Paintings that make their own status as objects the subject — frames, backs of canvases, picture-within-pictures, painted fly on the glass. The illusion turns inward and questions what painting itself is.

Painting an entire building facade or wall to appear as if it possesses architectural features — windows, cornices, depth, historical layers — that it physically lacks. Urban trompe-l'œil at civic scale.

Mathematically coherent constructions that are physically impossible — Penrose stairs, impossible cubes, infinite waterfalls. Each local section is correct; the impossibility only emerges when sections are combined.