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Many paintings of the trompe l’oeil genre attain their illusory verisimilitude by depicting quotidian things, such as a fly or an empty bird cage, as if they are placed directly on top of the painted canvas. Nicola van Houbraken’s 1700 trompe l’oeil Portrait of François Rivière, ______blank startles the viewer with the extraordinary sight of a man appearing to poke his head out from within the picture frame.