{"id":128733,"date":"2010-01-02T17:56:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T22:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"1644 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-01-02T17:56:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T22:56:07","slug":"the-dome-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/128733","title":{"rendered":"The dome illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/europe\/italy\/latium\/rome\">Rome<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/europe\/italy\">Italy<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/categories\/inspired-inventions\/optical-curiosities\">Optical Oddities<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Jesuit church of Saint Ignazio was supposed to have a glorious dome, but when the money ran out in 1642, the plans were scrapped. Instead of foregoing the dome entirely, painter and Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo proposed that he paint a life-sized illusion of a dome that would fool the eyes of visitors (as long as thy looked up from the proper angle).<\/p>\n<p>His masterpiece still fools the eye today. Painted between 1685 and 1694, it is a remarkable piece of perspective work.<\/p>\n<p>Pozzo painted another illusion for the barrel-vaunted ceiling of Saint Ignazio. The huge painting depicting the life and works of Saint Ignatius lifts and expands the simple building skyward, with forced perspectives of figures retreating into the heights. The technique is known as quadratura, a mixture of geometrically accurate architecture in forced perspective, and elements of fantasy, like cherubs and floating saints. Pozzo wrote a book on the subject called Perspectiva Pictorum and Architectorum, which was very influential for other Baroque painters.<\/p>\n<p>Both the dome and the central illustration are painted on one 17 meter canvas. His work on the illusions was so well received that he was granted the commission for the rest of the artwork in the church.<\/p>\n<p>In April of 1891 an enormous powder magazine explosion just outside the city rocked Rome and damaged the ceiling artwork (it also collapsed part of the roof of the Parliament building and sent the city into a general panic). A restoration in 1961 repaired the illusion.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to view the illusion is to enter the church, keeping eyes low until you reach the circular marble marker that indicated the ideal vantage point for the dome illusion. A second marker on the floor indicates the ideal viewing spot for the rest of the ceiling.<\/p>\n<p>In 1703 he repeated his dome illusion in Vienna, in a Jesuit church now called the University Church and at the Church of the Ges\u00f9 in Frascati, Italy.\n<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.atlasobscura.com\/files\/imagecache\/place_main\/place_images\/Sant'Ignazio_-_painted_dome_-_antmoose_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"  width=\"280\" height=\"280\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rome, Italy | Optical Oddities The Jesuit church of Saint Ignazio was supposed to have a glorious dome, but when the money ran out in 1642, the plans were scrapped. Instead of foregoing the dome entirely, painter and Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo proposed that he paint a life-sized illusion of a dome that would fool [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}