LEFT-HANDED PAINTERS

The role of the righ hemisphere in the building of our visual space is now well established. The purpose of the present research was to dete rmine the proportion of left handed painters, and to identify famous p ainters which were left-handed. The methods were as follows. First, th e study of the portraits of the painters; but self-portraits were wort hless (right-handed painters often painting themself as observed in th e mirror, i.e. left-handed). Therefore, only portraits of painters mad e by another painter or by photography were used. Secondly, the orient ation of the hatchings used by the artist for the representation of th e shadows in the drawing: the right-handed artist making hatchings des cending from right to left, and the left-handed artist making hatching s descending from left to right. Thirdly, the study of the relevant li terature about history of art. The study population included 500 paint ers divided in two groups: a population of 127 painters studied by por traits and hatchings; and a population of 373 painters studied only by hatchings. In the first population, the proportion of left-handed pai nters was 4,7%. In the second population, the proportion of left-hande d painters was 2,1%. Among the 500 painters they were 14 left-handed s ubjects, i.e. 2,8%. These 14 painters were, in alphabetical order: Cam biaso, Dufy, Escher, Fussli, Grandville, Holbein, Klee, De La Patellie re, Leonard de Vinci, menzel, Montelupo, papety, Regnault, Van Goyen. Conversly, some painters often quoted as left-handed were, in matter o f fact, right-handed according to the criterions of this study; these 7 painters were: Durer, Landseer, Lenbach, Raphael, Michel-Angelo, Pic asso, Sebastiano del Piombo. The incidence of 2.8% of the left-handed painters was far below the proportion of 8% of the general population. This was in contradiction with the usually received idea of the great frequency of the left-handedness of the painters in the history of ar t.