Reliable Top-Left Light Convention Starts With Early Renaissance: An Extensive Approach Comprising 10k Artworks

Frontiers in Psychology

Claus-Christian Carbon¹ 

关键词: empirical aesthetics;    light source;    renaissance;    artworks;    art history;    laterality;    art and science;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00454

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Art history claims that Western art shows light from the top left, which has been repeatedly shown with narrow image sets and simplistic research methods. Here we employed a set of 10,000 pictures for which participants estimated the direction of light plus their confidence of estimation. From 1420 A.D., the onset of Early Renaissance, until 1900 A.D., we revealed a clear preference for painting light from the top left—within the same period, we observed the highest confidence in such estimations of the light source.

【 授权许可】

CC BY