El Greco
The 16th- and 17th-century paintings of El Greco are populated by famously elongated figures. These curious forms have kindled speculation that the painter may have suffered from astigmatism, an optical defect. The reasoning goes that spectacle lenses could have overcorrected El Greco’s astigmatism, producing retinal images that were stretched vertically, thus causing the master to paint tall and skinny objects that appeared normal to him. To test this idea, a vision scientist persuaded a volunteer to wear a distorted telescope for two days straight. She copied squares and drew squares from memory four times each day. The copied squares were always picture-perfect, but the squares from memory were not always so: they started 50 percent too tall and grew progressively shorter with time. By the end of the second day, she was drawing impeccable squares. The conclusion was that even if El Greco suffered from astigmatism, he would have quickly adapted to it.