Brief glance, lasting effect

Pointing fingers are among the most common hand gestures in early modern painting. Art historians have long assumed that they directly guide the viewer’s gaze toward key elements. However, this assumption has 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 perception of these edited versions with the originals. While pointing fingers attract few direct fixations, their fleeting perception significantly reshapes how other elements are viewed. Semantically related areas—such as 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 semantic connections between characters and objects when pointing gestures are present. In the second phase of the study, open-ended interviews revealed that interpretations of the original paintings differ from those of the edited versions. These results underscore the central role of depicted pointing gestures. They reshape the narrative connections between elements, ultimately leading to different interpretations. Among all the artworks we analyzed, Caravaggio’s and Raphael’s compositions were the most affected by the removal of pointing gestures. This confirms that the effectiveness of pointing gestures in art also depends on individual artistic approaches and the artist’s mastery in guiding the viewer’s attention

Gesture · Nonverbal communication · Perception · Social perception · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art Education and Development · Spatial Neglect and Hemispheric Dysfunction