anamorphosis, in the visual arts, an ingenious perspective technique that gives a distorted image of the subject represented in a picture when seen from the usual viewpoint but so executed that if viewed from a particular angle, or reflected in a curved mirror, the distortion disappears and the image in the picture appears normal. Derived from the Greek word meaning “to transform,” the term anamorphosis was first employed in the 17th century, although this technique had been one of the more curious by-products of the discovery of perspective in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The first examples appear in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. It was regarded as a display of technical virtuosity, and it was included in most 16th- and 17th-century drawing manuals. Two important examples of anamorphosis are a portrait of Edward VI (1546) that has been attributed to William Scrots, and a skull in the foreground of Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, The Ambassadors (1533). Many examples are provided with special peepholes through which can be seen the rectified view that first eluded the viewer.
A modern equivalent of anamorphosis is the so-called Ames Room, in which people and objects are distorted by manipulation of the contours of the room in which they are seen. This and other aspects of anamorphosis received a good deal of attention in the 20th century from psychologists interested in perception.
Artists and architects in the 21st century continued to experiment with anamorphic designs. In 2014 Swiss artist Felice Varini—known for large-scale anamorphic installations—created Three Ellipses for Three Locks, for which he painted three ellipses, segments of which covered roads, walls, and nearly 100 buildings in the historic centre of the city of Hasselt, Belgium. The design became coherent only when viewed from a particular vantage point in the city.