A Trick of the Eye

"The great Italian Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini considered painting to be a lie, and the best painter, consequently, to be the biggest liars of all." pg 5

Well matte's are a form of illusion so definitely are supposed to seem like a lie when painted realistically?

Benvenuto Cellini did not aim to make perfect copies of existing objects, rather he saw the main task of art as the invention of unseen things. pg 6

 This is definitely the description of a matte painting.

Baldassare Peruzzi 1481-1536
Hall of Architectural Perspective 1515

The painter clearly master the theoretical laws of perspective and puts them into practice with virtuosity: painted double columns open the view to a balustrade, over which a vista of the Holy City is presented. Peruzzi employs all of the tricks of illusionary painting, with the statues in the side niches contributing to the complete decomposition of the wall. 'Outside" the observer recognises the familiar architecture of rome, with the city fading into the distant hills.
 There was one thing however, that Peruzzi's painting could not overcome: the perfect illusion is only visible from one point in the centre of the room, the precise point at which all of the lines of the perspective presentation converge.

Trompe L'oeil translates to Cheat the eye.

The viewer should be able to distinguish reality from illusion only after lengthy observation.

But a matte generally isn't onscreen for a lengthy amount of time, so it shouldn't be suspect to judgement, it's usually sandwiched between multiple shot which means the illusion isn't lost the multiple shots give more evidence to the fact it's not an illusion but is actually real.

The observer is both entertained and disturbed, aware of how superficially and imprecisely he usually sees the world. To deceive the eye also means to open it.

People were no longer interested in the juxtaposition of painting and reality, the goal was no longer for picture to puzzle those who looked at them, rather it was no longer for pictures to puzzle those who looked at them, rather it was to give an overwhelming impression, a rush of senses, with the viewer capitulating to those emotions, something that reached it's highpoint in the later water lily pictures of Monet.
 The Impressionists tolerated tromp l'oeil at most as a point of reference. This relationship is illustrated well in the Portrait of Emil Zola, which manet painted of his friend in 1868. The prints in the painting's right upper corner take up a classic motif of tromp l'oeil, but the artist does not carry it out in all o fit's detail, he refers to it instead. A similar reference is made with the utensils lying on the table beneath the pictures. Manet even borrowed the practice, popular in the 18th century, of hiding his signature on an object with the picture, in this case a brochure.
 In a completely different way, the invention of photography and it's rapid advance through all fields of life further contributed to the decline of tromp l'oeil. Portrait and nude, street scene and interior, landscape and still life: each of these classical genres of painting were now captured by photography, which appeared to be unbeatable as far as realism was concerned.
 The viewer believe that he could recognise the world through photography that photography could capture it 'objectively', just as it was in real life. In contrast, the Impressionist painted the world as a sensual perception, a vision. The confrontation of illusion and reality no longer took place within one medium, namely the painted picture, it was now split into different media. Painting was responsible for the dream world, photography for the sober reality. pg17

I love this because it brings together Realism and Impressionism.