During the 15th century, some theatrical plays contained a specific character, called the festaiuolo, performing the role of mediator for the audience during the action. As stated by Michael Baxandall (1988), the pictorial figures that are “catching our eyes and pointing to the main action” are inspired by the festaiuolo and refer to a real experience for the beholders of that time.

Pointing gestures appear to have a clear purpose in the image: the eyes are supposed to follow them. The simple and primordial structure, in which one character is showing us the main scene or some key element, progressively evolved into more complex deictic compositions. Between the Renaissance period and the late 17^th century, pointing gestures multiply inside the main scene, comprising different functions. In the Trattato della pittura Leonardo da Vinci called them the atti dimostrativi, stressing that they are useful not only for spatial but also for temporal references. In other words, deictic signs became tools of internal visual organization, emphasizing the relationships between different characters, symbolic attributes and chronological sequences of the story.

In Art History it has been assumed that pointing gestures direct the eye and the attention of the beholder in order to facilitate the understanding of the content. However, this assumption has never been investigated empirically. Neither is there a differentiated theory of deixis in painting, nor do we know whether, to what extent and how deixis influences the beholder’s gaze.  

In this project, we will use eye trackers to measure the eye movements of beholders looking at paintings in which deixis plays an important role. We will also submit questionnaires to the participants and test their understanding of the paintings. The gaze movements of three different experimental groups will be compared: art experts, lay persons, and Deaf fluent speakers of Austrian Sign Language.

Do deictic signs significantly influence the beholder’s gaze? And, if so, how does the gazing of the deictics and their targets occur and relate to the interpretation of the artworks? Do linguistic and cultural particularities of the beholder (such as the mastering of a Sign Language) influence the perception of the pointing chirograms and their understanding?

In answering these and other research questions, our study will contribute to the field by extending the theoretical framework of Art History in regard to pictorial deictic gestures. It will also clarify how the visual perception of hand signs, meant to guide the gaze, unfolds and how they influence the interpretation of paintings. Importantly, it will deliver new insights about cultural and linguistic particularities of art beholders. Finally, it will extend the fields of Gesture Studies and Cognitive Linguistics, revealing unknown commonalities between living gestural cultures and pictorial traditions.
 

The project is led by art historian Temenuzhka Dimova, specialized in the study of hand gestures in Early Modern painting, and art historian Raphael Rosenberg, a pioneer of implementing eye tracking in this field (both Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History, University of Vienna).