Brief Glance, Lasting Effect: How Pointing Gestures Influence the Perception of Paintings

Pointing fingers are among the most common hand gestures in early modern painting. Art historians havelong assumed that they directly guide the viewer’s gaze toward key elements. However, this assumptionhas never been tested empirically. To investigate how depicted pointing gestures influence eye movements,we digitally removed the pointed forefingers from 15 paintings (16th–17th century) and compared the perceptionof these edited versions with the originals. While pointing fingers attract few direct fixations, theirfleeting perception significantly reshapes how other elements are viewed. Semantically related areas—suchas the targets of pointing gestures and the faces of pointing characters—receive increased direct attention.Also, our novel areas of interest dwell time correlation method reveals that viewers establish different semanticconnections between characters and objects when pointing gestures are present. In the second phase of thestudy, open-ended interviews revealed that interpretations of the original paintings differ from those of theedited versions. These results underscore the central role of depicted pointing gestures. They reshape thenarrative connections between elements, ultimately leading to different interpretations. Among all the artworkswe analyzed, Caravaggio’s and Raphael’s compositions were the most affected by the removal ofpointing gestures. This confirms that the effectiveness of pointing gestures in art also depends on individualartistic approaches and the artist’s mastery in guiding the viewer’s attention.