The System of Early Modern Painting

Berger, Harry

doi:10.2307/2902938

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In his 1998 essay, Harry Berger Jr. [1] describes what he and others saw as a monolithic view in academic discourse on the early modern period. Martin Jay termed…”

Section: Early Modern Painting: Monolithic Mechanistic Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trace and the Gaze: Textural Agency in Rembrandt’s Late Portraiture From a Vision Science Perspective

DiPaola

2008

Electronic Workshops in Computing

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This interdisciplinary paper hypothesizes that Rembrandt, reacting to his Italian contemporaries, developed specific painterly techniques, typically not associated with the early modern period that engaged the viewer and directed their gaze. Though these methods were not based on scientific evidence at the time, it can be argued that they are based on a correct understanding of visual perception. Using scientific and critical sources, this paper attempts to support and extend art history theories that artists in the late 'early modern' period developed painterly techniques associated with optics and texture, along side the more established perspective construction, to guide and influence the observer's perception of their work. While discussed in general terms, the paper will focus on faces and portraiture and will analyze Rembrandt's late portraits to support the general thesis.

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“…In his 1998 essay, Harry Berger Jr. [1] describes what he and others saw as a monolithic view in academic discourse on the early modern period. Martin Jay termed…”

Section: Early Modern Painting: Monolithic Mechanistic Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trace and the Gaze: Textural Agency in Rembrandt’s Late Portraiture From a Vision Science Perspective

DiPaola

2008

Electronic Workshops in Computing

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“…Directing the viewer's gaze to selected regions in a portrait is one of the tools a modern artist has for emphasizing certain character traits of the sitter and for giving viewers a glimpse into the collaboration between sitter and painter in the development of a portrait [7,8,9]. In addition to being consistent with the modern understanding of mind-eye dynamics, artists' selective application of detail is also consistent with the specialized neural pathways of human vision: coarse brushwork corresponds to low spatial frequency information that is transmitted very rapidly to many regions of the visual system to help orient the eyes to points of possible interest, whereas fine brushwork corresponds to higher spatial frequency channels that transmit more slowly to the centers involved in detailed and prolonged inspection [10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rembrandt's Textural Agency: A Shared Perspective in Visual Art and Science

DiPaola

Riebe

Enns³

2010

Leonardo

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This interdisciplinary paper hypothesizes that Rembrandt developed new painterly techniquesnovel to the early modern period -in order to engage and direct the gaze of the observer. Though these methods were not based on scientific evidence at the time, we show that they nonetheless are consistent with a contemporary understanding of human vision. Here we propose that artists in the late 'early modern' period developed the technique of textural agencyinvolving selective variation in image detail -to guide the observer's eye and thereby influence the viewing experience. The paper begins by establishing the well-known use of textural agency among modern portrait artists, before considering the possibility that Rembrandt developed these techniques in his late portraits in reaction to his Italian contemporaries. A final section brings the argument full circle, with the presentation of laboratory evidence that Rembrandt's techniques indeed guide the modern viewer's eye in the way we propose.

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“…Moving in the other direction, the present data help build the art historical case that during the Renaissance period Rembrandt was one of the first artists to begin exploring the consequences of varying relative textural detail in his artwork (see the full development of this art historical argument in DiPaola et al 2010). This argument for precedence had been made previously by art historians, including Berger (1998Berger ( , 2000 and Martin (1988), in the context of a much wider discussion of how the Renaissance application of science to art went well beyond the contribution of mathematics, perspective, and geometry in the construction of a painted image. Specifically, these authors propose that the emerging understanding of science during the Renaissance included an understanding, implicit or explicit, of the perceptualmotor dynamics that occur when a human eye with limited spatial resolution is confronted with a large scene or image.…”

Section: Implications For Visual Art and Sciencementioning

confidence: 84%

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

2013

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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.

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The System of Early Modern Painting

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

The Trace and the Gaze: Textural Agency in Rembrandt’s Late Portraiture From a Vision Science Perspective

The Trace and the Gaze: Textural Agency in Rembrandt’s Late Portraiture From a Vision Science Perspective

Rembrandt's Textural Agency: A Shared Perspective in Visual Art and Science

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

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