The Monocular Duke of Urbino

Abstract

Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), the Duke of Urbino, was a well-known historical figure during the Italian Renaissance. He is the subject of a famous painting by Piero della Francesca (1416–1492), which displays the Duke from the left and highlights his oddly shaped nose. The Duke is known to have lost his right eye due to an injury sustained during a jousting tournament, which is why the painting portrays him from the left. Some historians teach that the Duke subsequently underwent nasal surgery to remove tissue from the bridge of his nose in order to expand his visual field in an attempt to compensate for the lost eye. In theory, removal of a piece of the nose may have expanded the nasal visual field, especially the “eye motion visual field” that encompasses eye movements. In addition, removing part of the nose may have reduced some of the effects of ocular parallax. Finally, shifting of the visual egocenter may have occurred, although this seems likely unrelated to the proposed nasal surgery. Whether or not the Duke actually underwent the surgery cannot be proven, but it seems unlikely that this would have substantially improved his visual function.

Kinetic Perimetry on Virtual Reality Headset

“…The nose acts as a fixed visual reference object and the physiologic nasal visual field is smaller than the temporal visual field in the primary gaze [41]. It has been demonstrated that, regardless of the size or shape of the nose, the maximum extent of the nasal visual field was 64° when evaluated with manual Goldmann perimetry [42], [43]. For instance, in a recent study, Weber et al [44] demonstrated that wearing a mouth-nose mask can reduce the visual field function in inferior-nasal sector of healthy subjects, especially when the nose clip was not correctly used.…”