 |
Visual impairment in art is a limited topic covered by research, with its focus being on how visually impaired people are represented in artwork throughout history. This is commonly portrayed through the inclusion of objects such as canes and dogs to symbolize blindness, [1] which is the most frequently depicted visual impairment in art. Many notable figures in art history, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, and Georgia O'Keeffe, were visually impaired, or theorized to be so.
The Moche culture of ancient Peru depicted the blind in their ceramics. [2]
In 1768, James Bruce discovered the tomb of Ramesses III, whereon its walls depicted images of blind harpists. [3] Their visual impairment was represented by having slits for eyes.
Representation of blind people in Medieval art often is portrayed with leashed dogs. Some examples include:
Representation of blind people in Renaissance art, similar to Medieval art, was conveyed through symbolic objects. Some examples include:
Blindness was portrayed in more literal terms as well, via closed eyes or in text. Some examples include:
Most representation found in Romantic art displays portraits of individuals who experience visual impairments.
In Modern art many different mediums have been used to portray visual impairments.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath widely known for his diverse talents including his paintings and drawings. [12] After examining six of Da Vinci's works across three different techniques, researchers noted that the eye of the subject in each of his works turned outward. [13] One of these works included the famous depiction of the Vitruvian Man. The eyes were at an angle consistent with intermittent exotropia (deviated outward) which can alter the perception of people and objects to appear 2D. [13] The researchers theorize this may have contributed to Da Vinci's ability to capture space on a flat canvas. [13]
Guercino was an Italian Baroque painter who developed esotropia (a condition in which the eye turns inward). This affected his work causing his subjects to appear as having unusual facial features. [14]
Francis Bacon was an English Philosopher who dabbled in creating illustrations for his works. His illustrations often depict heavily distorted images that feature abnormalities in faces. This has been theorized to run consistent with dysmorphopsia, a brain condition that affects perception of objects. [15]
Rembrandt was a Dutch painter whose self portraits display an outward turned eye which would have caused a lack of depth perception called stereo blindness. [16] This meant that details were varied in his paintings.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish printmaker and co-founder of the Cubist Movement. It is believed that he may have experienced strabismus, which is why his work is characterized by a lack of depth perception. [17]
Edgar Degas was a French impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. In 1870, he began noticing signs of decreasing vision which is attested to retinal degeneration. [18] The blurriness of his later paintings is usually attributed to his condition.
Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of Impressionism. He is widely known for his Water Lilies series. From 1912 to 1922, his vision declined due to cataracts. This affected the colour perception of his images which makes many of his paintings appear slightly blurry and yellowish in tone. [19]
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French Impressionist artist. He is alleged to have had myopia. [20]
Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist who experienced symptoms of age-related macular degeneration in 1964. In her later works she enlisted assistants to help in painting her work, but kept credit of her works to herself. [21]
Michael Naranjo is a Native American blind sculptor who lost his sight to a grenade in the Vietnam War and began sculpting with clay during convalescence. His work is in the permanent collection of the White House, and his words are inscribed on the glass panels of the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, D.C., and cited [22] by President Obama at the dedication ceremony on October 5, 2014:
"When you're young, you're invincible. You're immortal. I thought I'd come back. Perhaps I wouldn't, there was that thought, too, but I had this feeling that I would come back. Underneath that feeling, there was another, that maybe I wouldn't be quite the same, but I felt I'd make it back."—Michael A. Naranjo [23]
Bianca Raffaella is an English registered blind painter and disability activist. [24]
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
The Last Supper is a mural painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1495–1498, housed in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The painting represents the scene of the Last Supper of Jesus with the Twelve Apostles, as it is told in the Gospel of John – specifically the moment after Jesus announces that one of his apostles will betray him. Its handling of space, mastery of perspective, treatment of motion and complex display of human emotion has made it one of the Western world's most recognizable paintings and among Leonardo's most celebrated works. Some commentators consider it pivotal in inaugurating the transition into what is now termed the High Renaissance.
Christopher William Tyler is a neuroscientist, creator of the autostereogram, and is the Head of the Brain Imaging Center at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute He also holds a professorship at City University of London.
The Portrait of a Musician is an unfinished painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1483–1487. Produced while Leonardo was in Milan, the work is painted in oils, and perhaps tempera, on a small panel of walnut wood. It is his only known male portrait painting, and the identity of its sitter has been closely debated among scholars.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, being two of the most famous artworks ever created, but also upon his diverse skills as a scientist and inventor. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or they may be inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits often serve as important state and family records, as well as remembrances.
Rolf on Art is a British art television series made by the BBC. It is hosted by Rolf Harris, the Australian television presenter. The series began in 2001, and the most recent episode was made in 2007. It was followed by Harris's other art programme, Star Portraits with Rolf Harris, which was released after the success of Rolf on Art.
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
A self-portrait is a portrait of an artist made by themselves. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, the practice of self-portraiture only gaining momentum in the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting themselves as either the main subject, or as important characters in their work. With better and cheaper mirrors, and the advent of the panel portrait, many painters, sculptors and printmakers tried some form of self-portraiture. Portrait of a Man in a Turban by Jan van Eyck of 1433 may well be the earliest known panel self-portrait. He painted a separate portrait of his wife, and he belonged to the social group that had begun to commission portraits, already more common among wealthy Netherlanders than south of the Alps. The genre is venerable, but not until the Renaissance, with increased wealth and interest in the individual as a subject, did it become truly popular.
The Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) left thousands of pages of writings and drawings, but rarely made any references to his personal life. The resulting uncertainty, combined with mythologized anecdotes from his lifetime, has resulted in much speculation and interest in Leonardo's personal life. Particularly, his personal relationships, philosophy, religion, vegetarianism, left-handedness and appearance.
Horses have appeared in works of art throughout history, frequently as depictions of the horse in battle. The horse appears less frequently in modern art, partly because the horse is no longer significant either as a mode of transportation or as an implement of war. Most modern representations are of famous contemporary horses, artwork associated with horse racing, or artwork associated with the historic cowboy or Native American tradition of the American West. In the United Kingdom, depictions of fox hunting and nostalgic rural scenes involving horses continue to be made.
The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation.
The portrait of a man in red chalk in the Royal Library of Turin is widely, though not universally, accepted as a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. It is thought that Leonardo da Vinci drew this self-portrait at about the age of 60. The portrait has been extensively reproduced and has become an iconic representation of Leonardo as a polymath or "Renaissance Man". Despite this, some historians and scholars disagree as to the true identity of the sitter.
The Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci is a late 15th- or early 16th-century portrait of a man. The picture was discovered in 2008 in a cupboard of a private house in Italy.
Richard C. Muhlberger was an American art critic, and museum curator. He was Curator of Education for the Worcester Art Museum. He later became a professor of art history at Western New England College, and the vice-director for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he is best recognized for his analysis of many famous art pieces.
La Scapigliata is an unfinished painting generally attributed to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, and dated c. 1506–1508. Painted in oil, umber, and white lead pigments on a small poplar wood panel, its attribution remains controversial, with several experts attributing the work to a pupil of Leonardo. The painting has been admired for its captivating beauty, mysterious demeanor, and mastery of sfumato.
The Prado Mona Lisa is a painting by the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and depicts the same subject and composition as Leonardo's better known Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris. The Prado Mona Lisa has been in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1819, but was considered for decades a relatively unimportant copy. Following its restoration in 2012, however, the Prado's Mona Lisa has come to be understood as the earliest known studio copy of Leonardo's masterpiece.
The two–Mona Lisa theory is a longstanding theory proposed by various historians, art experts, and others that Leonardo da Vinci painted two versions of the Mona Lisa. Several of these experts have further concluded that examination of historical documents indicates that one version was painted several years before the second.