Differences over time in head orientation in European portrait paintings

ABSTRACT

There is evidence for a tendency for European portrait paintings to have the head oriented so that the left side of the face is visible more than the right side. This is particularly the case for female sitters. There is evidence that the left side of the face shows emotion more than the right side does, so it has been proposed that there is a tendency for artists or sitters to want to show more of the emotionality of the sitter. It is shown here that the left-side tendency varies by date. In two studies, large samples were drawn from European gallery collections (study 1) and the National Portrait Gallery in London (study 2). The studies showed a strong left side tendency before 1600, absence of the tendency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some recurrence of it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modulated by changing gender differences. These findings show that cultural, historical, or art-historical factors are likely to be involved in determining tendencies in head orientation as well as psychological ones.

KEYWORDS:

• Left side bias
• perception
• lateral asymmetry
• portraits

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Hester Lewis for assistance with the reliability check.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.