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Lucretia Moroni

Trompe l'œil

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malden, hudson river
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Coffered ceiling with trompe-l'œil painted rosettes, New York, NY
Coffered ceiling with trompe-l'œil painted rosettes, New York

Trompe l'oeil is a style of painting that creates a sense of illusion in order to open up more space and depth.

At its most effective, trompe l’oeil involves several painted plans and realistic, three-dimensional painting techniques. An architectural frame, such as a window or an arch, is often painted in the foreground in real or almost real scale, in whatever style is most suitable for the location. In most cases, trompe-l’oeil also requires the use of perspective that continues through the different layers of the background until it reaches the horizon line.

This type of art dates back to the wall paintings in Pompeii, in the late Roman imperial period, which are characterized by an ornamental and intricate style. We also find trompe-l’oeil in the churches of the early Renaissance and in the murals in Italian palazzos and villas. Most of the Great Masters used this technique when working on commissioned murals, including Giotto (c. 1267-1337), Mantegna (c. 1431-1506), Veronese (1528-1588), and Tiepolo (1696-1770), to name a few. Trompe-l’oeil came into fashion again the 1980s; one of the greatest American artists to use this form was Richard Hass (b. 1936). In 1996, Salon, an international gathering of decorative artists in this field, was founded in France to promote and exhibit this unique style of art; Lucretia Moroni was one of its founders.

Biography

Born in Milan in 1960, Lucretia Moroni has worked as an artist, photographer, and designer in a wide variety of media for over forty years. In the early 1980s, Moroni studied decorative painting with a specialization in fresco painting, murals, and pattern design at the renowned Van der Kelen School in Brussels, and continued her training in interiors with the Oscar-nominated designer and architect Renzo Mongiardino in Milan and New York. 

Since the late 1980s, Moroni has worked on a vast range of private and public projects worldwide, including residences in Italy, South America, and the United States. Notable commissions include her work with Franco Zeffirelli for the sets of La Traviata, and her twenty-four custom-color trompe l’oeil murals in the Bethesda Fountain Arcade in New York’s Central Park. Her work has been featured prominently in design and general magazines and publications worldwide, including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue Italia, and Architectural Digest. In her studio, Fatto a Mano, Moroni revives and adapts traditional and natural materials and techniques — including linen, silk, velvet, gauze, silk-screening, hand-printing, stenciling, and faux-finishing — to achieve a level of unparalleled artistry and contemporary craftsmanship in all aspects of her work.

Throughout her career, Moroni has used photographic processes and has explored the use of new grounds for painting and printmaking, particularly in the production of silkscreens and in the invention of new techniques to print on hardwood floors, glass, and verre eglomise. Since the early 2010s, she has devoted her time to photo-based art, specializing in alternative-process printmaking with precious metals such as gold, platinum, and palladium. Moroni has pioneered new techniques for printing gold, palladium, and platinum directly on gold and palladium leaf, a delicate and painstaking process that produces unique, luminescent, richly textured images reminiscent of both Italian Renaissance miniatures and Eastern Orthodox icon paintings and deeply rooted in the artist’s own personal history.

Moroni’s work has been shown in solo shows and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe since the 1990s. She is represented by L’Affiche Gallery in Milan and by Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York. She is based in New York and Italy.

Moroni also runs the Foundation Museum of the Palazzo Moroni in Bergamo, Italy, which was commissioned and built in the 17th century by Francesco Moroni. The Foundation houses several works by the great late Renaissance painter Giovanni Battista Moroni (1520-1579), and is a testament to both the historic heritage of the Moroni family as well as the artistic and cultural life of Bergamo.