Cultural evolution in European Paintings

Abstract

**Author(s):** Julie De Keyzer Assessing aggregate bundles of cultural replicators in the domain of visual art, we look into measurable proxies of cultural movements, c.q. the European Enlightenment. Here we focus on a metric we expect to be correlated with the introduction of the European Enlightenment, namely a trend in the height of the visible horizon. We hypothesize a diachronic lowering of the horizon line to a balanced ‘observer-objective’ perspective, as a proxy for overthrowing a more chthonic perspective in pre-Modern time. We expect this trend to be more pronounced in depictions of secular themes, and in regions that eased themselves away from Catholicism. We manually compiled a dataset of 1141 European paintings (1500-1900). Using Growth Curve Analysis, we built a linear mixed-effect regression model, with the proportion of the horizon line as the response variable, and the date of conception, regional provenance, and theme (secular vs. religious) as covariates. Individual artists and museum collection were added as random effects. Our result indicate a curvilinear effect of time on the height of the horizon, coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment, and a lower horizon in profane and less catholic regions. These results suggest that paintings bear a measurable mark of the intellectual history in Europe.