R the centuries. Artistic norms may possibly counteract these standard perceptual processes,however it is far more likely that they are in line with simple perceptual and emotional processes and biases. Our contribution delivers an example of how interdisciplinary study that includes art historians and psychologists may well PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047420 address a [DTrp6]-LH-RH site question from Western Medieval and Renaissance art by indicates of psychological experiments. This endeavor is named “experimental art history”. We start off using the observation that in this period the majority of portraits of Christ have been frontal having a gaze directed toward the beholder. In this context,we define portrait as an image of a single particular person alone showing only hisher face or the upper part of the body,painted on canvas or wooden support. The representations of identifiable persons in bigger compositions,group portraits or narrative settings are not considered in our study. The frontal portraits (with extremely couple of exceptions) represent Christ as God,i.e what is labeled the Holy Face (as opposed for the profiles,where He’s the sufferer,the Man of Sorrows). This study appears at Christ as God and will exclude the Man of Sorrows. Previous research have demonstrated that within the th and th centuries,just about all profane portraits (in contrast for the depictions of Christ) have been depicted in distinctive degrees of profile,quite seldom in frontal view (Hodne. Well-known exceptions had been Albrecht D er and Hans Holbein the Younger. We notice the same tendency in later periods also. Why did these artists favor to paint Christ with his face directed towards the beholder,when profane faces have been noticeably additional typically painted in different degrees of profile Art historians typically take recourse to historical sources to be able to answer such inquiries. There’s a robust tradition in the West of copying the veil of Veronica as a template for the face of Christ. The blood and sweat around the relic was believed to become imprinted on the veil straight in the face of Christ by blood wiped from his face in the course of his method to Golgotha. As outlined by tradition,the intensity of Christ’s gaze in the veil made it essential to cover the relic having a piece of cloth. The hugely venerated relic was kept within the Old St Peter’s basilica (Rome). This symmetrical face with all the strong direct gaze became the normal technique to represent the Holy Face in Western art with the Renaissance both north and south of your Alps (Morgan,: p But could there not be other factors for the sturdy preference of full frontal portraits with a directed gaze Such reasons could point to elements deep in human emotional responses to face perception.We wanted to discover irrespective of whether convention will be the only answer to the Renaissance preference for representing faces from the holy in frontal view. Can we exclude that preference for frontal faces inside the depiction of deity might have deeper evolutionary and biological reasons Can there be other and biologically driven mechanisms leading to a preference for the strongly symmetrical face (i.e the portrait in frontal view,as opposed to halfprofile) for holy persons,and may this answer the question why Christ is depicted in frontal view and profane faces in halfprofile We develop the idea that experimental art history can examine the plausibility of various hypotheses by assessing the impact of different face and gaze directions on modern viewers of portraits. Hence,are there deeper reasons for painting Christ in frontal view and profane faces in halfprofile Certainly these masters we.