The mirror that lies: When painters played with the soul of images
Imagine for a moment. You step into a dim gallery, lit only by the flickering glow of a few candles. Before you, a monumental painting draws every eye. Two men in sumptuous attire—one clad in furs, the other in ecclesiastical robes—stare at you with an intensity that borders on discomfort. Between t
By Artedusa
••7 min read
The mirror that lies: when painters played with the soul of images
Imagine for a moment. You step into a dim gallery, lit only by the flickering glow of a few candles. Before you, a monumental painting draws every eye. Two men in sumptuous attire—one clad in furs, the other in ecclesiastical robes—stare at you with an intensity that borders on discomfort. Between them, scientific instruments, a terrestrial globe, a lute with broken strings. Everything seems perfect, too perfect. Then, as you shift slightly to the right, a detail sends a chill down your spine: a deformed skull, almost monstrous, suddenly emerges in the foreground, as if death itself had risen from the painting’s depths. You’ve just fallen into the trap set by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1533. Welcome to the world of anamorphosis, where art does not merely represent—it deceives, it conceals, it reveals.
The eye that errs: when perspective becomes an accomplice
The first time you encounter an anamorphosis, it feels like stumbling upon a shameful secret. Your gaze slides over the smooth surface of the canvas, convinced it sees one thing, until a detail upends everything. This optical magic does not arise by chance. It is the fruit of the Renaissance’s obsession with perspective, that science which allowed space to be tamed on a flat surface. But while Italian masters like Brunelleschi or Alberti sought to create the illusion of perfect depth, some artists twisted these rules into instruments of subversion.
Leonardo da Vinci, ever the pioneer, was among the first to explore these distortions. In his notebooks, one finds sketches of warped eyes, faces stretched as if seized by an invisible hand. Far from mere technical exercises, these drawings reveal a fascination with the ambiguity of sight. For an anamorphosis is, above all, this: an image that exists only for a viewer standing in the right place at the right moment. The rest of the time, it is nothing but a scribble, a shapeless blot. This very fragility makes it an object of power. Whoever controls the angle of vision controls the message.
The skull and the power: when death hides in the folds of silk
Let us return to Holbein’s The Ambassadors. This painting, now hanging in London’s National Gallery, is far more than a simple portrait. It is a thinking machine, a visual enigma that has traversed centuries without ever yielding all its secrets. The two men depicted, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, are French ambassadors on a mission to London. Their pose is solemn, their gaze direct. Around them, symbols of knowledge and power accumulate: a celestial globe, a book of arithmetic, a lute. Everything breathes order, mastery, civilization.
And then, there is that skull. The skull that appears only if you stand at the far right of the painting, as if you’ve just overheard a confidence. Its presence is all the more unsettling because it contrasts with the opulence of the clothing and objects. Art historians have long debated its meaning. A memento mori, of course—a reminder of the mortality that stalks even the most powerful. But perhaps, too, a veiled critique of Henry VIII’s court, where Holbein was then working. At a time when the break with Rome was complete and heads rolled for far less than an opinion, that skull could also be read as a threat. A way of saying: "Look closely at these men, they believe they control everything. But death is not so easily impressed."
The chamber of secrets: when a painting becomes a box of illusions
If Holbein made history with his anamorphic skull, Samuel van Hoogstraten took the art of illusion even further. This 17th-century Dutch painter, a student of Rembrandt, created what might be called the first "installation" in art history: a Perspective Box, a wooden box painted inside, designed to reveal its secrets only through a small viewing hole. Imagine a miniature room, with tiled floors, paintings on the walls, a window opening onto a landscape. Everything seems normal—until you realize the proportions are wrong, the objects distort with the angle, some images appear only if you move your head by a millimeter.
Van Hoogstraten did not merely paint. He played with perception, turning the viewer into an active accomplice of the illusion. In an era when cabinets of curiosities were all the rage, when elites amused themselves by collecting strange objects and inexplicable phenomena, his boxes were marvels. They proved that art was not just a matter of talent, but also of cunning. That seeing was believing—but believing was sometimes deceiving.
The faces that lie: when engraving becomes a political weapon
Anamorphosis was not always reserved for the elite. In 16th-century Germany, an engraver named Erhard Schön turned it into a tool of mass subversion. His Vexierbilder—enigmatic images—circulated as inexpensive prints, sold at fairs and markets. At first glance, these engravings seemed to depict nothing more than landscapes or innocuous scenes. But if you looked at them from the side, at a certain angle, faces would appear. Faces of princes, bishops, influential figures—often mocked, caricatured, ridiculed.
Schön worked in Nuremberg, a city where the Protestant Reformation was in full swing. His engravings were time bombs. They allowed criticism of power without risking censorship, since the hidden images were visible only to those who knew where to look. A way of saying: "The king is naked, but only if you know where to direct your gaze." These works, now preserved in museums, remind us that art has always been a battleground. That behind the smooth surfaces of official portraits, there have always been artists scraping away the varnish to reveal what no one wanted to see.
The mirror and the devil: when illusion becomes sorcery
Anamorphosis was not always well received. In the 17th century, as Europe was shaken by religious wars and witch hunts, some of these images were accused of diabolism. How else to explain, if not by magic, that a simple brushstroke could transform into a face under a certain angle? Optical treatises of the time, like those of Giovanni Battista della Porta, attempted to rationalize these phenomena, but for many, anamorphosis remained a dangerous enigma.
Anamorphic mirrors, in particular, fascinated and terrified. These curved surfaces, often conical, distorted reflections in spectacular ways. Some saw them as tools of divination, others as proof of the devil’s existence. In European courts, they were used for parlor games, but also for more troubling experiments. Imagine a mirror capable of revealing your true face, the one you hide from the world. An idea that, even today, retains something deeply unsettling.
The art that watches you: when the viewer becomes an accomplice
What makes anamorphosis so fascinating is that it does not merely represent—it demands participation. Unlike a classical painting, which can be admired from afar, an anamorphosis reveals itself only if you agree to play along. You must move, adjust your gaze, sometimes even close one eye for the image to make sense. In this, it is profoundly modern. It anticipates contemporary installations, where the viewer is no longer a passive observer but an essential actor in the work.
Take Felice Varini, the Swiss artist who paints geometric shapes on city walls. From the front, his works appear distorted, incomprehensible. But if you stand in the right spot, everything aligns suddenly, as if by magic. Varini is merely revisiting, five centuries later, the principle of Renaissance anamorphoses. Except that today, these illusions are no longer confined to cabinets of curiosities. They invade public space, turning streets into optical playgrounds.
The final secret: when art refuses to die
Today, anamorphoses are everywhere. In the distorted logos of football stadiums, in the special effects of Christopher Nolan’s films, in the street art installations that fill our cities. They have traversed centuries without ever losing their power to fascinate. Because they remind us of a fundamental truth: what we see is never quite reality. That behind appearances, there is always another layer of meaning, another truth waiting for its moment.
Perhaps that is why The Ambassadors continues to haunt us. Because that skull, that memento mori hidden in the folds of a painting, reminds us that art, like life, is a matter of perspective. That everything can shift in an instant, depending on the angle from which you choose to look. And that sometimes, all it takes is a single step for the entire world to change shape.
The mirror that lies: When painters played with the soul of images | Art History
