Section I

The intriguing game of reality and simulation designed to foster the illusion of reality goes back to the Classical era. Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century CE, tells of a competition between two famous Greek painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes with such mastery that even birds tried to peck at it. Parrhasius, for his part, managed to deceive even Zeuxis’ trained eye, painting a curtain which Zeuxis asked to be drawn aside so that he could admire the painting he thought it concealed.
This legendary anecdote, with which artists were very familiar from the Renaissance on, ensured that the two subjects remained popular for a long time in trompe l’œil painting, where bunches of grapes dangle temptingly before the observer, while curtains or veils drawn illusory over a picture’s subject tend to bewilder him.