SCIENCE AND FINE ART. 759 



its true meaning — a fault of our vision — the painter is even placed 

 in a position to reproduce the dazzling impression of the solar 

 disk. Of this the Castle Gandolf o of Roqueplan in the Raczynski 

 Gallery, through its boldness, affords an interesting example. 



The representation of the stars as stars, in the shape in which 

 the stars of decorations are drawn and from the resemblance to 

 which star-fishes are named, rests likewise upon defects of our 

 vision ; for the stars of the sky are only shining points without 

 rays, as indeed a few favored eyes see them. The sacred halo, 

 the phosphorescence of holy heads, which in Correggio's Night 

 extends over the whole Christ-child, and objectively illuminates 

 the scene, has nothing to do with this. The origin of that 

 kind of representation, so far as it is not a free sport of fancy, is 

 possibly traced by Herr Exner to the crown of light which one 

 sees in a dewy field in sunshine around the shadow of his own 

 head.* By another defect of the human eye, astigmatism, the 

 more advanced grades of which, such as short-sightedness, belong 

 to pathology, Herr Richard Liebreich was able to explain certain 

 peculiarities long incomprehensible, which disfigured the later 

 works of the distinguished English landscape-painter. Turner, f 

 It would have been easy for a modern oculist to protect him from 

 this fault by properly fitted glasses. Color-blindness, known of 

 old, but thoroughly studied only in our own age, is another very 

 frequent defect of our vision, to which corresponds, in the ear, an 

 inability to distinguish between the tones. A color-blind painter 

 is perhaps not so inconceivable as a musician without hearing. 



It might not be practicable to define the limits beyond which 

 optical science can do no more good to the artist. In order to know 

 the laws of the movements of the eyes, to understand wherein close 

 vision is different from far vision, no painter will have reason to 

 regret applying to himself Johannes Miiller's remarks in his early 

 paper on the Comparative Physiology of the Sense of Sight. Yet 

 it must be granted that an artist could paint an qjq very well with- 

 out ever having heard of the Sansonian images, on which depends 

 the soft glance of a mild eye as well as the wild fire of an angry, 

 penetrating eye; just as the landscape-painter would paint the 

 blue sky on his canvas no better if he had learned to take note of 

 the yellow brush in every great circle of the heavenly sphere that 

 passes through the sun, which continued unremarked through 

 thousands of years, but has been familiar to physiologists since 

 Haidinger's discovery. 



irradiation compare the Handbuch der physiologischen Optic, second edition. 5. Lieferung. 

 Hamburg and Leipsic, 1889, pp. 394 et seq. 



* Physiologisches und pathologisches in den bildenden Kiinsten. Vienna, 1889, p. 17. 



f Proceedings of the Royal Institution, etc., weekly evening meeting, Friday, March 6, 

 1872. 



