quadro riportato

quadro riportato (Italian: ‘carried—or transferred—picture’).
Term applied to a ceiling picture that is intended to look as if it is a framed easel picture placed overhead; there is no illusionistic foreshortening, figures appearing as if they were to be viewed at normal eye level. Mengs' Parnassus (1761) in the Villa Albani (now Villa Torlonia), Rome, is a famous example—a kind of Neoclassical manifesto against Baroque illusionism. Often, however, quadro riportati were combined with illusionistic elements, as in Annibale Carracci's Farnese Ceiling (1597–1600) in Rome.