Here is a book that tricks the eye, pops up, flips over, animates and mesmerizes. Inside are masterpieces, groundbreaking art and paper ephemera drawn from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Since earliest times, artists have delighted in creating works that make people wonder if they can believe their eyes. Whether it’s a room whose cupboards appear to be stocked with treasures, a painting that a fly seems to have landed on, or an image that changes when viewed from a new angle, this book will leave you marvelling at ingenious artistic trickery.

• Turn two-dimensional images into 3-D with a pop-up stereoscope
• Make still images come to life with a pop-up zoetrope
• Animate a fire by moving a moire screen across a nineteenth-century print
• Explore eye teasers from sixteenth-century Islamic art
• Examine how perspective is used and misused by artists
• Understand how Georges Seurat used dots to create some of the most famous eye magic of all time
• Watch straight lines wiggle before your eyes in
twentieth-century Op Art