Gerard van Honthorst's Musical Group on a Balcony is an example of di sotto in sù.

The phrase translates literally as "from below to above," a visual technique that foreshortens figures in order to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane, usually a ceiling, above the viewer. Baroque and Renaissance patrons wanted the image of someone standing over them in their parlors, vestibules and hallways, to give them the reassurance of a power greater than their own. It can be quite stressful to be a king or queen, a duke or duchess, and di sotto in sù was the artist's way of creating a visual index of the spiritual world above the corridors of the extravagant nobles. Italy dominated in the practice of this technique, as epitomized in Giulio Romano, Correggio, Mantegna, and Tiepolo.

In 1605, Camilo Borghese received a great career boost by his election as Pope Paul IV. The papacy was a real jackpot for his entire family, as many of the Borgheses became quite wealthy, especially the Pope's nephew Scipione, a Caravaggio patron. Scipione's uncle made him a Cardinal, which led to Scipione's appointment to a number of official positions, and allowed him to amass a huge collection of art. By the time the young van Honthorst arrived in Rome, Cardinal Borghese was building a villa to house his art, and possibly himself and his entourage. For the villa, the Cardinal enlisted Artemisia Gentileschi's father Orazio and Agostino Tassi to decorate his "casino, dedicated to the Nine Muses, with vault frescoes of life-size musicians performing." Van Honthorst knew a good idea when he saw one, and he also knew that he wanted to emulate the lifestyle of Cardinal Borghese, so he included his fresco Musical Group on a Balcony several years later in his own home.

Like many clerical commissions, the frescoes of the casino of Cardinal Borghese reflected trust in the pagan faith of the pre-Christian Romans, who maintained cults and shrines of the Muses. For the masculinity-obsessed Romans, it was nonetheless a council of women who safeguarded the essence of poetry. The Indian firm Everest Branding Solutions created a recent anti-smoking billboard which made a big impact with its use of di sotto in sù, showing a priest reading prayers, lifting his right hand to drop a ceremonial libation onto the casket which coincides with the viewer. While Cardinal Borghese used the Roman theology of the Nine Muses to evoke artistic productivity, Everest Branding Solutions had to rely on the more recent social preoccupation with the artistic representation of the limits of life, in order to frighten the viewer into quitting smoking. Whereas Borghese was a priest putting musicians praising pagan goddesses on his ceiling, the anti-smoking campaign puts a priest on the ceiling to frighten you.