View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by AIR Universita degli studi di Milano Predella journal of visual arts, n°35, 2014 - Miscellanea / Miscellany www.predella.it / predella.cfs.unipi.it Direzione scienti" ca e proprieta ̀ / Scholarly Editors-in-Chief and owners: Gerardo de Simone , Emanuele Pellegrini -
[email protected] Predella pubblica ogni anno due numeri online e due numeri monogra" ci a stampa / Predella publishes two online issues and two monographic print issues each year Tutti gli articoli sono sottoposti alla peer-review anonima / All articles are subject to anonymous peer-review Comitato scienti" co / Editorial Advisory Board : Diane Bodart, Maria Luisa Catoni, Michele Dantini, Annamaria Ducci, Fabio Marcelli, Linda Pisani, Riccardo Venturi Cura redazionale e impaginazione / Editing & Layout: Paolo di Simone Predella journal of visual arts - ISSN 1827-8655 pubblicato nel mese di Ottobre 2015 / published in the month of October 2015 Andrea Pinotti El Greco at the Ophthalmologist’s The paper aims at reconstructing the centennial history of the so-called “El Greco fallacy”, namely the hy- pothesis that the extremely elongated gures painted by the Cretan artist were due to his astigmatism and not to a stylistic option intentionally assumed by the painter. This hypothesis interestingly and prob- lematically intertwines the status of the perceptual image with the status of the represented picture. While o ering a survey of the main positions defended by ophthalmologists, psychologists, art critics and art historians on this optical issue, the essay tries to reject the false alternative between a physiologistic and a spiritualistic approach to art, both based on an unsustainable causalistic assumption.