Rembrandt's eye saw no depth.The 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn or Ryn (rĕm`brănt, Du. rĕm`bränt här`mənsōn vän rīn), 1606–69, Dutch painter, etcher, and draftsman, b. Leiden. lacked stereoscopic vision stereoscopic vision n. The single perception of a slightly different image from each eye, resulting in depth perception. , suggest two researchers at Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. It is a prestigious American medical school located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. in Boston. An optical analysis of Rembrandt's self-portraits reveals that his eyes tended to gaze away from each other rather than to focus on a single point, say Margaret S Margaret, 1930–2002, British princess, second daughter of King George VI and sister of Queen Elizabeth II, b. Glamis, Scotland. In 1960 she married a commoner, the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who was created earl of Snowdon in 1961. . Livingstone and Bevil R. Conway. The artist's consequent lack of depth perception actually might have helped him render three dimensions onto flat surfaces, they say. The researchers studied high-resolution images of 24 oil paintings and 12 etchings that are recognized as Rembrandt's self-portraits and that clearly show the pupils and whites of both eyes. Livingstone and Conway measured the position of each pupil relative to the eye's center to determine the direction of gaze. In the sell-portraits, Rembrandt's right eye generally looks straight ahead, while the left deviates outward. To perceive depth, a person's two eyes must converge on a single spot. Since it is the same eye that wanders in almost all the portraits, the condition probably was chronic, Livingstone and Conway suggest in the Sept. 16 New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med or NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is one of the most popular and widely-read peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world. .--B.H. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion