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Reliable Top-Left Light Convention Starts With Early Renaissance: An Extensive Approach Comprising 10k Artworks
Claus-Christian Carbon1,2, Alexander Pastukhov1,2
1Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
Abstract:
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.
One Sentence Summary:
This study demonstrates a robust preference for painting light from the top left for Western art history, starting from Early Renaissance until 1900.
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