Through the centuries, artists center one eye in portraits

Portrait artists through the centuries and across cultures seem to understand that the way to draw people?s attention to their work is to paint their subject?s eye on the midline of the canvas, according to Christopher Tyler, PhD, of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco.

He?s found that most of the portraits sampled from 265 different artists dating from the Middle Ages through the 20th century feature a face with one eye situated on or extremely close to the midline of the canvas, if the canvas is folded lengthwise, regardless of the head?s position.

There are many theories about artistic technique that draw viewers? attention, said Tyler, but none recognize the centering of an eye even though it appears to be a very common approach.

When he checked to see if artists just as often center other facial features, he found no similarly high correlations. The mouth, for example, was distributed much more broadly around the midline of the canvas. Also, it wasn?t that artists were centering the bridge of the nose and, by default, an eye?the bridge was as often somewhere other than the center of the portrait as it was centered, said Tyler, who presented his research at a 'Mind, brain and behavior' symposium on vision at APA?s 1998 Annual Convention. The phenomenon does not apply to profile portraits, he added.

'I was astounded to see such a universal principle,' said Tyler, who originally published these findings in Nature last April (Vol. 392, p. 877?878). 'And as far as I can tell, there?s no recognition of this principle in the art history literature.'

This lack of attention to this seemingly universal principle over centuries and across artistic styles implies that the concept of centering an eye is largely unconscious, Tyler said.

Now that he?s discovered the principle, the question becomes, 'What?s so important about being in the center,' he said. He?s beginning work to examine how people react to an eye in the center versus an eye off center.

Tyler welcomes comments and can be reached by e-mail.

?B. Azar