Brief Glance, Lasting Effect: Depicted Pointing Gestures Transform the Perception of Paintings

Pointing gestures are among the most common hand signs in early modern painting. Art historians have long assumed that they directly guide the viewer’s gaze towards 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 cent.) and compared the perception of these edited versions with the originals. Our results challenge traditional assumptions. 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, pointing characters play a stronger role in saccadic transitions between areas of interest. Finally, our novel AOI 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. Rather than merely directing the viewer’s attention from one point to another, as art theoreticians had assumed, 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.