The archive / Baroque / The Reverse of a Painting
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The Reverse of a Painting
Cornelius Gijsbrechts · 1625–1675
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3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. 300 DPI · sRGB · personal-use license.
Museum-quality giclée on Hahnemühle German Etching — heavyweight 310gsm, acid-free, velvety matte. Made to order & shipped.
Sizes in the download
Ready-to-print files at every size below — each drops straight into a standard frame at 300 DPI, nothing cropped:
Each of these also prints big-wall at 150 DPI — up to about 36″ on the short side (so the 24×18″ becomes 48×36″), for a step-back view. Or print the borderless master, the full-resolution scan, sharp to about 11×14″.
The work
There is no front to this painting.
Cornelius Gijsbrechts painted only the reverse of a canvas: the stretcher, the nails, a small note, and a decorative frame. From a distance you truly believe a painting has been left on the floor with its reverse facing outwards, and the deception is revealed only as you approach. He made it while serving as court painter to the Danish king between 1668 and 1672.
Look closer
The whole illusion is built from shadows.
Every part of the trick is carried by cast shadows: those thrown by the decorative frame onto the stretcher, by the stretcher onto the back of the canvas, and by the small note and the nails. For the deception to fully work, the painting had to be placed so that its painted, faux shadows agreed with the real light sources in the room around it.
Why it matters
A picture made to fool a king's cabinet.
The work was probably shown among other playfully deceptive pieces in the King's Perspective Chamber of the Royal Danish Cabinet of Curiosities around 1700.
the most radical meditation about painting as an object and as an image— Victor I. Stoichita, art historian
The file & the facts
- Title
- The Reverse of a Painting
- Artist
- Cornelius Gijsbrechts
- Year
- c. 1670
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original
- 66.4 × 87 cm
- Collection
- SMK — National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Open access · personal use
- File
- 300 DPI · sRGB · JPEG
