Illusionistic ceiling painting

The technique often uses foreshortened figures and an architectural vanishing point to create the perception of true space on a painted, most often frescoed, ceiling above the viewer.

Unlike other trompe-l'œil techniques or precedent di sotto in sù ceiling decorations, which often rely on intuitive artistic approaches to deception, quadratura is directly tied to seventeenth-century theories of perspective and the representation of architectural space.

[1] Due to its reliance on perspective theory, it more fully unites architecture, painting and sculpture and gives a more overwhelming impression of illusionism than earlier examples.

The steep foreshortening of the figures, and the painted walls and pillars were and are used to create an illusion of deep recession; a heavenly sphere or even an open sky.

He frescoed the walls with illusionistic scenes of court life, while the ceiling appeared as if it were an oculus open to the sky, with courtiers, a peacock, and putti leaning over a balustrade, seen in strongly foreshortened perspective from below;di sotto in sù.

From 1676 to 1679 Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio, painted an Adoration of the Name of Jesus on the ceiling of the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit headquarters in Rome.