Fascinated by optical phenomena and curious to explore the limits of picture making, painters share a long history of creating visual puzzles, composite pictures with shifting perspectives. Ambiguous images whose various levels of meaning depend entirely on the observer's point of view have drawn more than a few painters' brushes over time. This rich volume is dedicated to that multifarious tradition, from early Indian and Persian miniatures of imaginary anthropomorphic landscapes, to Guiseppe Arcimboldo's pictures of the seasons, and finally the works by the great surrealist masters Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí, encountering along the way such diverse artists as Francis Picabia, William Hogarth, Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher, Tony Cragg and Kara Walker.