Vagueness and volume: Testing the perception of depth in images with linear, sharp, or blurred contours.

In European painting, a transition took place where artists started to consciously introduce blurred or soft contours in their works. There may have been several reasons for this. One suggestion in art historical literature is that this may have been done to create a stronger sense of volume in the depicted figures or objects. Here we describe four experiments in which we tried to test whether soft or blurred contours do indeed enhance a sense volume or depth. In the first three experiments, we found that, for both paintings and abstract shapes, three dimensionality was actually decreased instead of increased for blurred (and line) contours, in comparison with sharp contours. In the last experiment, we controlled for the position of the blur (on the lit or dark side) and found that blur on the lit side evoked a stronger impression of three dimensionality. Overall, the experiments robustly show that an art historical conjecture that a blurred contour increases three dimensionality is not granted. Because the blurred contours can be found in many established art works such as from Leonardo and Vermeer, there must be other rationales behind this use than the creation of a stronger sense of volume or depth.

The art of resilience: a psychobiography of Frida Kahlo.

This psychobiography of Frida Kahlo explores the psychology of the famous Mexican artist. Drawing upon Kahlo's paintings and diary entries, a rich psychological analysis of the feminist icon is juxtaposed with the zeitgeist of 20th century Mexico. Framed through the theoretical model of feminist psychology, Kahlo's role in promoting gender equality and dismantling patriarchal society is discussed. Physical pain resulting from illness and impalement by a metal pole in a trolley accident was matched, if not exceeded, by the psychological pain the artist felt due to resulting issues with fertility and the long-sought but never-realized role of motherhood, infidelity within her marriage, and the eventual loss of her ability to paint. Nevertheless, Kahlo's perseverance and strength led to worldwide recognition of her bold and vibrant paintings, vulnerably depicting her rich inner world. The present study utilises perspectives from art therapy and attachment theory to elucidate the factors contributing to Frida Kahlo's resilience in the face of lifelong trauma and chronic pain. Ultimately, Kahlo's life and work offer valuable insight into the psychological experiences of women in patriarchal societies, emphasising the importance of feminist perspectives in psychological research and highlighting the healing and resilience-promoting role of art.

Art perception is affected by negative knowledge about famous and unknown artists.

The biographies of some celebrated artists are marked by accounts that paint a far from beautiful portrait. Does this negative-social knowledge influence the aesthetic experience of an artwork? Does an artist's fame protect their paintings from such an influence? We present two preregistered experiments examining the effect of social-emotional biographical knowledge about famous and unknown artists on the reception and perception of their paintings, using aesthetic ratings and neurocognitive measures. In Experiment 1, paintings attributed to artists characterised by negative biographical information were liked less, evoked greater feelings of arousal and were judged lower in terms of quality, than paintings by artists associated with neutral information. No modulation of artist renown was found. Experiment 2 fully replicated these behavioural results and revealed that paintings by artists associated with negative social-emotional knowledge also elicited enhanced early brain activity related to visual perception (P1) and early emotional arousal (early posterior negativity; EPN). Together, the findings suggest that negative knowledge about famous artists can shape not only explicit aesthetic evaluations, but may also penetrate the perception of the artwork itself.

Why did Rubens add a parrot to Titian's The Fall of Man? A pictorial manipulation of joint attention.

Almost 400 years ago, Rubens copied Titian's The Fall of Man, albeit with important changes. Rubens altered Titian's original composition in numerous ways, including by changing the gaze directions of the depicted characters and adding a striking red parrot to the painting. Here, we quantify the impact of Rubens's choices on the viewer's gaze behavior. We displayed digital copies of Rubens's and Titian's artworks-as well as a version of Rubens's painting with the parrot digitally removed-on a computer screen while recording the eye movements produced by observers during free visual exploration of each image. To assess the effects of Rubens's changes to Titian's composition, we directly compared multiple gaze parameters across the different images. We found that participants gazed at Eve's face more frequently in Rubens's painting than in Titian's. In addition, gaze positions were more tightly focused for the former than for the latter, consistent with different allocations of viewer interest. We also investigated how gaze fixation on Eve's face affected the perceptual visibility of the parrot in Rubens's composition and how the parrot's presence versus its absence impacted gaze dynamics. Taken together, our results demonstrate that Rubens's critical deviations from Titian's painting have powerful effects on viewers' oculomotor behavior.

New Biocides Based on N4-Alkylcytidines: Effects on Microorganisms and Application for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Objects of Painting.

The rapid increase in the antibiotic resistance of microorganisms, capable of causing diseases in humans as destroying cultural heritage sites, is a great challenge for modern science. In this regard, it is necessary to develop fundamentally novel and highly active compounds. In this study, a series of N4-alkylcytidines, including 5- and 6-methylcytidine derivatives, with extended alkyl substituents, were obtained in order to develop a new generation of antibacterial and antifungal biocides based on nucleoside derivatives. It has been shown that N4-alkyl 5- or 6-methylcytidines effectively inhibit the growth of molds, isolated from the paintings in the halls of the Ancient Russian Paintings of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Russia, Moscow. The novel compounds showed activity similar to antiseptics commonly used to protect works of art, such as benzalkonium chloride, to which a number of microorganisms have acquired resistance. It was also shown that the activity of N4-alkylcytidines is comparable to that of some antibiotics used in medicine to fight Gram-positive bacteria, including resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium smegmatis. N4-dodecyl-5- and 6-methylcytidines turned out to be the best. This compound seems promising for expanding the palette of antiseptics used in painting, since quite often the destruction of painting materials is caused by joint fungi and bacteria infection.

[Csontvary, a Hungarian Painter, Art, Psychiatry. The Analysis according to Rennert].

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, the great Hungarian artist was called a sort of a "crazy painter" by his contemporaries. Retrospectively, he was diagnosed as suffering not from psychosis but a schizotypal personality disorder based on seven out of nine diagnostic criteria. However, we still need a more precise definition of these criteria. It was also said that his paintings are like those made by the mentally ill. But following the principles and methods of the psychopathological art, especially that of Rennert, we find definitely more dissimilitudes than resemblances. In order to obtain a more accurate profile of this extraordinary creator, we still need further research focusing on the facts.

Synthetic images aid the recognition of human-made art forgeries.

Previous research has shown that Artificial Intelligence is capable of distinguishing between authentic paintings by a given artist and human-made forgeries with remarkable accuracy, provided sufficient training. However, with the limited amount of existing known forgeries, augmentation methods for forgery detection are highly desirable. In this work, we examine the potential of incorporating synthetic artworks into training datasets to enhance the performance of forgery detection. Our investigation focuses on paintings by Vincent van Gogh, for which we release the first dataset specialized for forgery detection. To reinforce our results, we conduct the same analyses on the artists Amedeo Modigliani and Raphael. We train a classifier to distinguish original artworks from forgeries. For this, we use human-made forgeries and imitations in the style of well-known artists and augment our training sets with images in a similar style generated by Stable Diffusion and StyleGAN. We find that the additional synthetic forgeries consistently improve the detection of human-made forgeries. In addition, we find that, in line with previous research, the inclusion of synthetic forgeries in the training also enables the detection of AI-generated forgeries, especially if created using a similar generator.

Art and Pediatric Orthopaedics: Repin and Inclusiveness.

A famous painting of the 19th century, by Ilia Repin, of a religious procession depicts the pageantry of the event but also draws the attention of the viewer to the exclusion of a disabled child from the festivities.

John Ranby FRS, William Hogarth and the Barber Surgeons.

The progress of dentistry towards a profession allied to medicine and surgery was incremental, and a most important step in that process was the separation of the surgeons from the barbers in 1745. Hogarth's illustration of a dentally active barber has been discussed previously in the British Dental Journal. In this paper, his probable contribution to the campaign for separation led successfully by his friend, surgeon John Ranby FRS (1703-1773), through the dramatic and much analysed painting The death of the countess (1743), is analysed. In this paper, it is suggested that William Hogarth was not only aware of the tensions between the physicians, surgeons and barbers that had come to a head, but that he modified the first thoughts, seen in a sketch (now at the Ashmolean, Oxford), to incorporate in this painting, and the print made from it a conspicuous sub-scene, almost central in a composition where the dying countess would be expected to be the only subject, as a satirical comment on that internal conflict.

The Pellagra Portraits.

This Arts and Medicine feature reviews the history of pellagra and recounts the role of artist and illustrator John Carroll who, in 1919, painted portraits of people with the vitamin deficiency to document in color the appearance of pellagra skin plaques.

Time-of-day perception in paintings.

The spectral shape, irradiance, direction, and diffuseness of daylight vary regularly throughout the day. The variations in illumination and their effect on the light reflected from objects may in turn provide visual information as to the time of day. We suggest that artists' color choices for paintings of outdoor scenes might convey this information and that therefore the time of day might be decoded from the colors of paintings. Here we investigate whether human viewers' estimates of the depicted time of day in paintings correlate with their image statistics, specifically chromaticity and luminance variations. We tested time-of-day perception in 17th- to 20th-century Western European paintings via two online rating experiments. In Experiment 1, viewers' ratings from seven time choices varied significantly and largely consistently across paintings but with some ambiguity between morning and evening depictions. Analysis of the relationship between image statistics and ratings revealed correlations with the perceived time of day: higher "morningness" ratings associated with higher brightness, contrast, and saturation and darker yellow/brighter blue hues; "eveningness" with lower brightness, contrast, and saturation and darker blue/brighter yellow hues. Multiple linear regressions of extracted principal components yielded a predictive model that explained 76% of the variance in time-of-day perception. In Experiment 2, viewers rated paintings as morning or evening only; rating distributions differed significantly across paintings, and image statistics predicted people's perceptions. These results suggest that artists used different color palettes and patterns to depict different times of day, and the human visual system holds consistent assumptions about the variation of natural light depicted in paintings.

The art of valuation: Using visual analysis to price classical paintings by Swedish Masters.

This study seeks to address the difficulty of pricing art and the limitations of conventional valuation models by using visual analysis to determine the price of paintings. We examine a large hand-collected sample of classical paintings by Swedish Masters, categorize them based on various dimensions, and reduce measurement error by visually examining and classifying each painting into a theme. We compare this 'visual' approach with the conventional 'terminological' approach. We find that the technique, theme, and auction house all have a substantial impact on the price. We argue that a visual inspection should take precedence over analysis based on the artwork's title. This is because the latter leaves many artworks unclassified and results in a systematic bias. The study demonstrates the importance of using art-informed characteristics to reduce measurement error in pricing paintings.