Perspective in Renaissance art

In Rome , there are several wonderful examples of how Renaissance and Baroque artists were beginning to re-learn the lessons of perspective, which, had been discarded during the medieval period while artists focused on the social and religious dimensions of art.

Realistic perspective in paintings requires artists to understand a lot about the human vision system. If you can accurately portray perspective, you might just be able to build a jumbo-sized cathedral on a moderate-sized budget.

The most ambitious attempt at this could be the church of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola of Rome. Looking at this detail from the church’s ceiling, you almost believe that it ascends to infinity.(picture above)

Unfortunately, the illusion only works from one point in the church. Once you start to move around, the illusion breaks down. Take a look at this view from under the church’s “dome”:

The formerly “straight” column is now awkwardly bent, revealing the artist’s clever deception. The ceiling of the church is actually nearly flat.

But the church designers saved big bucks with this design: a few painters are always cheaper than legions of stoneworkers and masons.

An even more impressive illusion was achieved in the Palazzo Spada, where the architect Francesco Borromini designed a columned passage to appear 35 meters long when it was in fact just 8 meters in length:

The floor of the hallway slopes upward, and the ceiling and walls converge. Even the “hedges” at the end of the hall are miniaturized, as is the sculpture in the center. Unfortunately the museum didn’t let visitors walk up the hallway for action photos, so I had to generate this picture from a postcard after the fact.

Artist Who Create Art from Trash: Amazing Art

Robbie Rowlands is one of a number of artists who had a rare opportunity to do whatever they wanted to a building that was soon to be demolished. The Depot project questions the nature of the world around us and the everyday stable objects we take for granted – such as the interior structure of our dwelling spaces. He (quite literally) peels back the layers of everyday reality to reveal surfaces not typically meant to be seen. Based in Melbourne, Robbie studied at the Pratt Institute in New York and has been working ever since.

Constructed Photographs (by Gillian Brown)

The photographs of Gillian Brown are specials; Why? you’d probably say at first. But look! don’t conclude things only at the first photo. Go reading and you’ll see few more photos of the same set – only seen from different perspectives.

The truth is that these aren’t just paintings painted over real life photos. How did the author achieve this? The 3D effect these images accomplish works only from certain angle of view.
If you remember our articles about Felice Varini , you’ll immediately recognize the technique and understand how they work.

Tape art illusions

The amazing portraits were made by sticking small pieces of tape one over another. The more layers author attached one over another, the darker was the shade he achieved. It struggles me how detailed all of the portraits are, and it must have taken time and great amount of talent to create something so interesting . May be is not a real optical illusion but nice to be posted here

Car in street art

Most of the examples of street art at Optical illusion from Kurt Wenner or Julian Beever  appear  drop down into a hole, but not many where the image appears to pop up like this.This fine piece of art by Manfred Stader and Edgar Müller does just that.

Black and White Face

Face painting illusion

Impactants structures by Rinus Roelofs

Holland artist and mathematician Rinus Roelofs constructs charming mathematical structures. He constructs his structures in computer but some of them became sculptures in various Holland towns.
The sculpture above was erected in Borne (Holland) in 2005. It consists of 26 tetrahedrons or 104 triangles. Triangles are just slid together. Construction is stable and need no further fixing.

Bet he created a lot more computer models of three-dimensional structures. One of them (below) shows Hamiltonean path of polyhedron. Hamiltonean path is a sequence of edges that visits all vertexes of a polyhedron exactly once.

Besides three-dimensional structure Rinus Roelofs created a set of two-dimensional tessellation structures for Escher Centennial Congress in Rome in 1998. They represents regular structures that constitute infinite impossible figures. He insists not to call them tessellations but joins.

Anamorphic Self Portrait Chalk Art

Creative graffiti illusions from all over Brazil

 

These people have done something really cool in here: they painted over every old wall they found. How they did it? They looked for familiar shapes on those walls and its cockles that might look like faces and then used their skills and paint to make their imagination look real. There is sure a lot more than just old walls out there…