gms | German Medical Science

Purpose: To be crossed eyed is a wide-spread dysfunction of the eye. Usually squinting is regarded as unattractive. In ancient times societies saw squinting as a sign of piety or even beauty. Even Venus was depicted heterophoric quite often. The most famous artist who was crossed eyed was Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (*08.02.1591; †22.12.1666, both Italy). His nick name was “Il Guercino” which means “the squinter”. This poster is to reflect vision and art from the perspective of a crossed eye person.

Methods: Selective literature research of books and journal articles via PubMed, Google Scholar and Google with respect to life and work of Giovanni Francesco Barbieri.

Results: As squinters use only one eye mostly as the other eye is amblyopic it could be expected that their paintings would be more or less two dimensional.

Already at the age of 7 Barbieri showed great talent in drawing and painting. With 17 he started his education at the famous Bologna school. Barbieri was very productive: he bequeathed 106 altarpieces and 144 other paintings. Already at his life time he was well accepted and quite wealthy. Analysing a selection of Barbierie´s paintings it is amazing how detailed the artist was working on light and shadow in his paintings to offer a three dimensional picture.

Conclusions: Barbieri did not make a secret of the dysfunction of his eyes. In contrast, he showed his squinting eye distinctly in his famous self-portrait from ca. 1635. Evaluating Barbieri´s paintings a detailed use of light and shadow can be seen in his paintings. It can be assumed that Il Guercino was so detailed studying light and shadow with his one eye that he could compensate for his amblyopic eye. By this Barbieri could depict pictures with an incredible amazing degree of variations of light and shadow.