History Picture. Conversation Piece. Devotional Picture.
Are image types reflected in the eye movements? 

Caecilie Weissert

Study

In the early modern period, various types of paintings developed in European painting. An explanatory model of art history assumes that their emergence reacted to different functions and needs in the viewing of images. Another assumption is that the ideal viewer behavior is already laid into a work (Belting, Kemp). Even if historically correct seeing is not possible for us, the modes of composition and reception inscribed into the work by its producer do appear to make it possible to build a bridge into the epoch of its creation. Since in the Netherlands the written art literature hardly expressed itself on these questions, the empirical examination of the assumptions made above is particularly interesting and can give important impulses to historical research. Therefore, all examples for the project were chosen from the field of Netherlandish painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.