Da Vinci’s possible vision disorder may have influenced his art
Enlarge / The recently restored oil painting Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo, shows evidence of exotropic eye alignment, a new paper claims. (credit: Christopher Tyler)
The great Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci may have suffered from an unusual visual tic: an intermittent outward turn of the eye, clinically known as strabismus. According to a new paper in JAMA Ophthalmology, that disorder may have helped this quintessential Renaissance man capture 3D space on a flat 2D canvas so brilliantly.
If so, Leonardo would be in very good company. Several other famous artists-including Rembrandt, Durer, Degas, and Picasso-likely also had some form of strabismus, based on analysis of eye alignment in their respective self-portraits. Because such a misalignment tends to suppress the deviating eye, this condition would have enabled Leonardo to shift between monocular vision and normal vision, giving him a distinct artistic advantage.
"Try shutting one eye," explains author Christopher Tyler, a visual neuroscientist at City University of London. "The world now looks flatter, so the spatial relations are easier to translate onto the flat canvas."
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