When Velazquez's portrait of Juan de Pareja was first exhibited in Rome, one art critic remarked: "This is the truth; the other exhibits are merely paintings". The appearance and look on a face, in real life as in art, is the route to understanding a person's soul and mind. How and where in the brain do we perceive faces? How does the brain identify the gender and ethnicity of a face?
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
(Spanish, 1599–1660)
Juan de Pareja (born about 1610, died 1670), 1650
Oil on canvas; 32 x 27 1/2 in. (81.3 x 69.9 cm)
Purchase, Fletcher and Rogers Funds, and Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de
Groot (1876–1967),
by exchange, supplemented by gifts from friends of the Museum, 1971 (1971.86)
www.metmuseum.org
To what extent, any by which neural mechanisms, can we divine the intentions of others by studying their face? What happens to our ability to perceive faces when the brain is damaged? What attributes makes us judge a face as being beautiful? How can we simulate faces through the computer? These are some of the questions that our distinguished speakers, from Europe and the United States, will address at this year's meeting on neuroesthetics.
