Eye Movements and Pictorial Space Perception: Studies of paintings from Francis Bacon and Piero della Francesca

Abstract

We propose a conceptual model and empirical studies showing that eye movement patterns are an essential part of visual coding and retrieval from memory of artwork images; also they reflect richness of perception of pictorial space composition including depth and movement. The first study examines eye movement patterns while viewing a painting by F. Bacon; areas important for spatial composition were more frequently fixated by observers with art training than by observers without art train-ing. The second study concerns the painting, l'Annunciazione, by Piero della Francesca, explored by subjects without art training. Piero's pictori-al 3D space and perspective captured immediately the observer's eyes, imposing an inquisitive exploration, with large size eye movements and unstable fixations both in direction and in depth. Fixation instability in depth (i.e. changes of vergence angle of optical axes) could be induced in a top-down manner by the vivid sense of depth experienced by the sub-jects.