Trompe-l'œil

And the Peale family offers us one more marvelous visual footnote.

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Charles Wilson Peale's 1795 Trompe-l'oeil staircase group presents two sons on a life-size painted stairway, complete with a real projecting step, an illusion so convincing that George Washington was reputed to have tipped his hat to the figures.

There's even a ticket to the upstairs museum lying on one of the steps.

The Titian in that painting is Titian Ramsey Peale I, 1780-1798.