14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most well-known traits of Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt van Rijn's art is its calming effect on the viewer. People have been fascinated with his painting for centuries, and many say that they fell very immersed in the artist's work. Thanks to modern scientific means, experts have been recently able to infer how he managed to create such an experience for his audiences. According to the work, Rembrandt painted large amounts of details around the eyes of his characters, thus tapping, unwillingly or not, into our attraction to faces. The end-result is a calm and deep immersion into the world he portrays, LiveScience reports.
The new research was prompted by the fact that University of British Columbia (UBC) scientist Steve DiPaola hypothesized that Rembrandt actually designed a technique to guide the viewer's gaze around a portrait in a very specific manner. In order to test the existence of this special narrative and “calmer” experience, the researcher and his team used computerized rendering programs to recreate four paintings of the famous artist. He employed both photos of himself and colleagues to create the new works of art. Details of their investigation appear in the latest issue of Leonardo, an arts and science journal published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“When viewing the Rembrandt-like portraits, viewers fixated on the detailed eye faster and stayed there for longer periods of time, resulting in calmer eye movements. The transition from sharp to blurry edges, known as 'lost and found edges,' also directed the viewers' eyes around the portrait in a sort of narrative,” the team leader explains. He adds that advanced knowledge of lighting, spatial layout and perspectives is commonly integrated in paintings and other works of art created by Renaissance artists. This was again confirmed through analysis by experts at the UBC Department of Psychology Vision Lab.
In a series of experiments, the researchers used eye-tracking technologies to track the gaze of test subjects, as they were watching either Rembrandt paintings, or the computer-generated images the team created. “Whether he observed how his own eyes behaved while viewing a painting or if he did it by intuition, Rembrandt incorporated an understanding of how the human eye works that has since been proven accurate,” DiPaola says.