For more than six centuries European painters have been ambitious to depict objects as if they possessed volume placing them in a space that seems equivalent to the real space of our world. This fiction was central to the artists purpose. Through a close examination of paintings from the 1400s to the early 20th century including works by Uccello Vermeer Titian and Monet Nicholas Penny explains in this latest title in the National Gallerys Closer Look series how artists sought to make the fiction