Staring Portrait

You have most likely seen at one time other portraits that not only look you square in the eye, but also even follow you with their eyes whenever you go. This noticed long ago and has always baffled many, giving some the jitters. The Great Russian writer Nikolai Gogol provides a wonderful description of this in his “portrait”. “The eyes dug right into him and seemed wanting to watch only him and nothing else. The portrait stared right past everything else, straight at him and into him.” quite a number of superstitions and legends are associated with this mysterious stare. Actually, it is nothing more than an optical illusion. The trick is that on these portraits the pupil placed square in the middle of the eye, just as we would see it in the eye of anybody looking at us direct. When a person looks past us, the pupil and the entire iris are no longer in the centre of the eye they shift sideways. On the portrait, however, the pupil stays right in the centre of the eye whichever way we step. In addition, since we continue to see the face in the same position in relation to us, we, naturally think that the man in the portrait has turned his head our way and is watching us. This explains the odd sensation we derive from other such pictures the horse seems to be charging straight at us however hard we try to dodge it; the man’s finger keeps pointing straight at us, and so on and so forth. They are often used to advertise or for propaganda purposes.