Following the Masters: Portrait Viewing and Appreciation is Guided by Selective Detail

Abstract

A painted portrait differs from a photo in that selected regions are often rendered in much sharper detail than other regions. Artists believe these choices guide viewer gaze and influence their appreciation of the portrait, but these claims are difficult to test because increased portrait detail is typically associated with greater meaning, stronger lighting, and a more central location in the composition. In three experiments we monitored viewer gaze and recorded viewer preferences for portraits rendered with a parameterised non-photorealistic technique to mimic the style of Rembrandt (DiPaola, 2009 International Journal of Art and Technology 2 82-93). Results showed that viewer gaze was attracted to and held longer by regions of relatively finer detail (experiment 1), and also by textural highlighting (experiment 2), and that artistic appreciation increased when portraits strongly biased gaze (experiment 3). These findings have implications for understanding both human vision science and visual art.

Observing Individuals Viewing Art

“…This finding is in accordance with previous results indicating that titles may influence viewers’ eye scan patterns (Kapoula et al., 2009; Ranta, 2012). Thus, while the perception of novel and unfamiliar art may depend primarily on bottom-up, basic visual factors such as contrast, saliency, visual complexity, or textural highlighting (DiPaola, Riebe, & Enns, 2013; Quiroga & Pedreira, 2011), title information represents a source of top-down influences that dynamically interact with bottom-up factors in order to guide our attention, awareness, and oculomotor behavior (Connor, Egeth, & Yantis, 2004; Corbetta & Shulman, 2002; Egeth & Yantis, 1997). Naturally, title information represent just one, rather elementary source of information that may aid the elaboration of presented paintings, which has been associated with individuals’ appreciation of different, not only artistic stimuli (Carbon & Leder, 2005; Faerber, Leder, Gerger, & Carbon, 2010).…”

Expertise influences meaning-making with Renaissance portraits: Evidence from gaze and thinking-aloud.

“…Eye-tracking is an effective method to observe a person’s attention to certain areas and aspects in a picture. For Stage I, perceptual analysis (Leder et al, 2004), paintings offer multiple features such as contrast, color, lines, and shapes, each possessing a certain power to direct gaze (DiPaola, Riebe, & Enns, 2013). This is in line with an artist’s aim to constitute meaning in an artwork by means of composition and visual expression.…”

Understanding gloss perception through the lens of art: Combining perception, image analysis, and painting recipes of 17th century painted grapes

“…In the last two decades, artists and vision scientists have boosted joint efforts to mutually profit from each other's knowledge (Adelson, 2001;Wade, Ono, & Lillakas, 2001;Cavanagh, 2005;Pinna, 2007;Conway & Livingstone, 2007;Cavanagh, Chao, & Wang, 2008;Melcher & Cavanagh, 2011;Pepperell & Ruschkowski, 2013;DiPaola, Riebe, & Enns, 2013). Via careful observation of the world, painters have developed implicit knowledge of the key image features needed to render different materials, and they have transferred that to the canvas.…”