Between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, a new aesthetic and ideological movement emerged in Italy that would permeate the artistic and literary production of the peninsula and the entire continent.

The Baroque conquered the European courts with its approach so far removed from earlier Mannerism: a triumph of invention over imitation, a celebration of emphasis and strangeness, a clear intention to surprise and impress, in stark contrast to Classicism.

The spectacularity sought by this movement is expressed to a large extent with impressive and sumptuous ceilings decorated with frescoes. – The goal is to amaze the viewer and fool their eyes, using illusionistic painting to recreate three-dimensional effects. The architectural barrier thus becomes a springboard to represent a scene halfway between reality and fiction, creating unreal spaces that mix earth and sky (like the ceiling of the church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome painted by Andrea Pozzo ).

In the Renaissance, Andrea Mantegna highlighted this technique in the Bridal Chamber of the Doge’s Palace in Mantua, using false architectural structures leading to an open sky, suggesting an illusion of depth.

However, during the Baroque, the paint on the ceilings, already widely used, is transformed into an artistic “stage” to express a triumph of figures, lasting stucco, illusionistic paintings. In addition to the technical complexity of the surface to be decorated, the optical distortion caused by a scale representation on the ceiling had to be taken into account.

To get around this problem, the most common stratagem – already known to Michelangelo of the Last Judgment – was to resort to anamorphosis, a curved or oblique image that could only be deciphered if it was observed from a certain point of view.

During this period, the Church of the Counter-Reformation was the main client: it wanted to dazzle and awaken strong emotions in the faithful, taking advantage of the Christian iconographic repertoire.