In the first of these two articles looking at the reading of eyes in paintings, I focussed on eyes wide open, particularly in surprise and horror. This article starts with a favourite illusion and follows that with eyes that are more closed than open.
When Leonardo da Vinci painted this quite modest portrait of Lisa Gherardini (1479- after 1551?) for her husband, Francesco del Giocondo (1460-1539), he could have had no idea how famous it would become. Nor could he have known of the illusion that was to be named after it: the Mona Lisa illusion, or to be more accurate, the Mona Lisa Gaze Effect.
This was first mentioned by Ptolemy, and described in more detail by Nicolaus Cusanus in the fifteenth century, based on icons. The phenomenon is that the eyes in certain portraits appear to look at the viewer, almost regardless of where they are relative to the painting. Explaining how this effect is produced is lengthy, complicated, and perhaps still incomplete, but Leonardo certainly knew how to produce it here.
Eyes can also tell of great sadness and grief.
Titian’s version of the Penitent Magdalene from about 1565 shows her eyelids swollen and red with crying, as she looks up to heaven. Other paintings of Mary Magdalene show her in a religious ecstasy rather than grief.
In Artemisia Gentileschi’s portrait of Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy from 1613-20, her eyes are closed and her head thrown back as she directs her unseeing gaze to heaven.
Elisabetta Sirani’s Penitent Magdalene is a powerful painting in which her eyes are closed in spite of the vision of Christ crucified on the left.
Annie Louisa Swynnerton’s undated portrait of Joan of Arc captures her during a moment of religious ecstasy, with a rainbow behind her.
I stay with Swynnerton’s paintings for a moment of love more sacred than profane.
Her painting of Cupid and Psyche from 1891 shows Cupid’s eyes closed as he tentatively kisses Psyche, whose eyes are averted and almost closed.
Gustav Klimt’s Judith I (1901) portrays a woman of power, whose eyes are almost closed in her pleasure from successful manipulation of the enemy general, Holofernes, and his subsequent beheading. This plays on the developing link between eroticism and death.
Eyes can also be tired, as painted by Swynnerton in The Convalescent from 1929. This woman is still recovering from her illness, and her eyes are struggling unsuccessfully with fatigue.
Perhaps the most injured eyes are those in Domenico Morelli’s Conversion of Saint Paul (1876). When he was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus in Syria, on a mission of persecution, he experienced a blinding light and the voice of Jesus, asking why he persecuted him. In this most ingenious composition, the saint’s eyes appear almost blinded, even though the light is now shining from behind.
I leave it to Jean-Léon Gérôme, many of whose paintings centre on vision and sight, for the last image of eyes.
The last narrative painting securely attributed to Gérôme is a little joke of his that proved to be his greatest influence on twentieth century art: his Optician’s Sign from 1902. This plays on the French term opticien, and chien, the French for dog, a verbal pun translated into the visual. Gérôme apparently entered this in a competition. Years later, it was seized upon by Surrealists, and proved an inspiration to them.
One parting observation about painting eyes: did you notice how many of these were painted by women? I’ll leave you to speculate why that might be.