Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci may have had an eye condition that gave him the unusual ability to recreate three-dimensional shapes in his sculptures and paintings, a study has found.
A person with the condition strabismus have eyes that appear to be pointing in different directions, with only one eye being used to process the visual scene.
Analysing portraits
Christopher Tyler of the City, University of London in the U.K. measured the eyes in six masterpieces thought to be portraits or self-portraits of da Vinci, including his works Vitruvian Man and Salvator Mundi , the most expensive painting of all time. The study, published in JAMA Ophthalmology , suggests that da Vinci had an intermittent version of the condition.
This allowed Da Vinci to switch between using two eyes (stereoscopic vision) to give him depth perception, and using just one eye (monocular vision) when he wanted to interpret a three-dimensional image on a flat, two-dimensional canvas.
“Several great artists, from Rembrandt to Picasso, are thought to have had strabismus, and it seems that da Vinci had it too,” said Mr. Tyler.
