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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality.
  2. n. A painting or effect created in this style.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A genre of still life painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
  2. n. A painting of this kind.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a painting rendered in such great detail as to deceive the viewer concerning its reality

Etymologies

  1. French trompe l'œil : trompe, third person sing. present tense of tromper, to deceive + le, the + œil, eye.

Examples

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Comments

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  • Prolagus See also Trompe-l'œil. Oct 22, 2008

  • whichbe A French term literally meaning "trick the eye." Sometimes called illusionism, it's a style of painting which gives the appearance of three-dimensional, or photographic realism. It flourished from the Renaissance onward. The discovery of linear perspective in fifteenth-century Italy and advancements in the science of optics in the seventeenth-century Netherlands enabled artists to render object and spaces with eye-fooling exactitude. Both playful and intellectually serious, trompe artists toy with spectators' seeing to raise questions about the nature of art and perception. (From ArtLex) Jun 4, 2008

‘trompe l'oeil’ has been looked up 1026 times, loved by 5 people, added to 25 lists, commented on 2 times, and is not a valid Scrabble word.