With 1 in 20 males having impaired colour vision, and over half the adult population needing spectacles, you’d expect painters to be similar, and there are claims of those who were colour-blind or had other visual problems. Are they reflected in their paintings?
Murillo
Sandals worn by gods, notably Mercury, and kings, who hide them under a rock, Toman combat assault sandals, ballet slippers, and wooden working clogs.
The Nativity, Adoration of the Shepherds and the Magi, painted by Bastien-Lepage, Murillo, Hieronymus Bosch, Edward Burne-Jones, and others.
Fine paintings from Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Gerard David, Beccafumi, Lavinia Fontana, Tintoretto, El Greco and Murillo.
In Gérôme’s early success The Cock Fight, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, Murillo’s Adoration of the Shepherds, and many farmyard paintings.
Guards throwing dice in the Crucifixion, gambling in Bosch’s vision of Hell, in a dingy tavern, losing an entire estate, and being played by young street urchins.
From dice shooters in a rough tavern, through Bastien-Lepage’s Little Chimneysweep, to poverty in Catania, and destitution in Paris.
A grand castle kitchen, the element fire, Vermeer’s milkmaid, a witch’s kitchen for Faust, a rotund cardinal tasting the sauce, and in a humble apartment in London.
Religious paintings of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, and charitable saints, before all changed in the 19th century..
Gambling among soldiers and young boys, games of Pharo, l’hombre, poker, and the Casino at Monte-Carlo.
