David Esterly carves our past.
Lost (and found) illusions
National Gallery, London, February 2000. Time to kill before a memorial service at a church on the Strand. A sign pointed toward an exhibition of the trompe l’oeil “letter racks” (whatever they were) by the seventeenth-century painter Cornelius Gijsbrechts (whoever he was). Why not? I walked into the show expecting to be amused by painted illusions. I walked out entranced …