Rembrandt | La teoria del difetto di vista

In un articolo pubblicato il 16 settembre 2004 sul New England Journal of Medicine, Margaret S. Livingstone, docente di neurobiologia della facoltà di medicina dell'Università di Harvard, suggerisce che Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669), i cui occhi sembrano avere avuto un difetto nell'allineamento della vista, soffrisse di "perdita di stereopsi", una condizione in cui risulta difficile o impossibile percepire correttamente la profondità.

La studiosa è giunta a questa conclusione osservando 36 autoritratti dell'artista.

Dato che egli non possedeva una normale visione binoculare, il suo cervello automaticamente sceglieva di utilizzare un solo occhio per l'osservazione.

Antonietta Brandeis | Venice painting

Antonietta Brandeis (1848-1926), was a Czech-born Italian landscape, genre and portrait painter, as well as a painter of religious subjects for altarpieces.

Early Life and Initial Training

She was born on January 13, 1848, in Miskovice (near Kutná Hora) in Eastern Europe. The first bibliographical indication of Antonietta Brandeis dates from her teens, when she is mentioned as a pupil of the Czech artist Karel Javurek of Prague. After the death of Brandeis' father, her mother, Giuseppina Dravhozvall, married the Venetian Giovanni Nobile Scaramella; shortly afterward the family apparently moved to Venice.

Jia Lu / 吕嘉, 1954 | Figurative painter

Jia Lu is an oil painter working in America, known for blending Asian and European imagery in her paintings, predominantly of women.

Jia Lu's works include Chinese ink paintings, oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, sculpture and prints.

Her early work strongly reflected the traditional aesthetics of her teacher Fan Zeng, but by the time she exhibited in Canada, she was critiquing new social developments, consumerism and power relations in China through a series of mixed-media self-portraits.

Martin Johnson Heade | Luminist painter

From: Encyclopædia Britannica

Martin Johnson Heade, Heade originally spelled Heed, (born August 11, 1819, Lumberville, Pennsylvania, U.S. - died September 4, 1904, St. Augustine, Florida), American painter known for his seascapes and still-life paintings and associated with the Luminist aesthetic.

Heade grew up in rural Pennsylvania and studied art with his neighbour the folk artist Edward Hicks and possibly with Hicks’s cousin Thomas Hicks, a portrait painter.

Arthur Drummond | Classicist / Genre painter

Arthur Drummond (1871-1951) was an British painter, the son of John Drummond, a British maritime artist.

Born in Bristol in 1871, Drummond enjoyed an early exposure to painting and received the encouragement and support of his family.

It appears that he received additional training both in Paris and in London.

While in France he studied with both Constant and Laurens - learning the ways of the Academic artists.