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Trompe l’oeil murals

Summertime is an ideal period for new projects. When you lie in the fresh of the dark shadow of your garden, sipping a juice fruit the best ideas always come to your mind.

You wandering how could you renovate the house expressing your creativity. Think smart try with a mural, a tromp l’oeil painting!

Mayby you are not Michelangelo and your house is not the Sistina Chapel but …you can try on that dark wall just near the wardrobe, should the masterpiece bad you can cover it! Lets’ go but first it is necessary to have a good project but what is a mural?

As you are too lazy to move to the public Library or to the bookshop I will give you some information.
The painted mural is both an ancient and modern art. From its root in prehistory, through the splendour of a Renaissance and baroque periods, to the challenging and vital 1930s, the art form has been nurtured and admired. Art began with wall painting, and although muralists may no longer dip their sticks in wood ash and natural clay pigment as they did fifteen thousand years ago, the urge to transform our surroundings has never left us. Murals are a skilful attempt illusion. They expand our horizon and provide an extra dimension to our instinctive need to dream and fantasise. On a more basic level, the mural is a decorative work for a specific area to expand the space we live in. At its finest it should be a continuation of architecture. At its most inspired, it is art, representing the essence of a great cultural tradition such as work of the Italian masters, Michelangelo, Veronese and Tiepolo, in the sumptuous palaces and churches of Italy.
Contemporary muralists are multifaceted and skilled painters, eager to tackle any style of architecture and any rooms whose awkward dimensions present a problem. The urge to make our houses and building more attractive, a nostalgia for the past , the challenge of working on a huge scale and the large amount of money offered to the best muralists, especially in America, have all contributed to the mural’s current popularity. The private mural has been encouraged by the proliferation of public works in the past two decades. Muralists have, traditionally been inspired by a limited number of classic themes, such as religion, the four seasons, historical events, the hunt and the ages of man. Besides having a wide range of subjects to choose from, the modern muralist has another advantage over his ancestors – the wealth of materials available. In addition to paint, mosaics or stained glass, which have always been used, muralists now employ ceramics, enamel, weaving, wood and stone carvings, metal and plastics to enhance the work.
According to the legend, Giotto, while still an apprentice in Cimabue’s workshop in thirteenth-century Florence, painted a fly on a nose of a portrait. The deception was so realistic that his master try to brush it away. For Giotto, this witty trompe l’oeil was just a good-humoured prank but today this kind of artistic deception is an earnest pursuit and big business.
Literally translated, trompe l’oeil means “deceive the eye”. For a split second, sometime longer, the onlooker is fooled into believing that what he sees is real. Surprise is the vital element and the tecnique requires great skill and the consummate use of perspective. The first recorded example of this form of wall painting is mentioned by the Roman author Pliny the Elder. More than two thousand years ago in Athens, the painter Zeuxis produced a painting of grapes so realistic that birds flew up to peck at them. A trompe l’oeil panel is very personal and has a “small is beautiful” intimacy about it. It feeds an almost universal desire to escape into a world where fantasy invades the senses. It needs very little space and, compared to a large wall painting, is more affordable.
A window opened on a romantic landscape or a lodge overlooking a fantastic garden are the most favourite themes for an easy tromp l’oeil decoration with an object, a bird or some flowers on foreground; or simply rich curtains on a wallpaper niche. Simulated niches have found their way into this art form since the sixteenth century when they first become an important aspects of decoration in European places and churches. Trompe d’oeil paintings may be a nostalgic reminder of the past or an unattainable dream world but the fascination of humour and visual deception of irresistible for many of us.

Something special – Recipes

Spiny Lobster in Coral dressing

One kilo of boiler spiny lobster, 5-6 ripe tomatoes, 5-6 basil leaves, a minced garlic clove, persil, two spoons of extra-virgin olive oil; the lobster eggs, salt, a tea spoon of lemon juice.

Cube the tomatoes and mix them in a large saucepan with basil and garlic, add olive-oil, lemon juice and persil; gently beat the mixture until it becomes a homogeneous sauce; strain it and finally add salt and the lobster eggs. Serve the spiny lobster at room temperature accompanied with this tasty coral sauce.

There are a lot of spiny Lobster varieties, it depends where they come from but, according to the Italian connoisseurs, the best are the small sized ones from the West cost of Sardinia. Spiny lobster should be bought alive and cooked just before eating. From a kilo fish you get approximately three hundred grams of pulp.