Another hand gesture you will frequently see in religious art is a figure (usually a Pope or bishop) pointing upwards with their index and middle finger. This is somewhat unnatural since you would generally point with your index finger alone. The use of two fingers represents the divine and human natures of Christ.
If you have played Elden Ring, There is an amazing video on the "two fingers" and "three fingers" by "The Tarnished Archaeologist" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hETam732CvY
> Another hand gesture you will frequently see in religious art is a figure (usually a Pope or bishop) pointing upwards with their index and middle finger. This is somewhat unnatural since you would generally point with your index finger alone. The use of two fingers represents the divine and human natures of Christ.
At Disney employee training they taught me to point with index and middle finger (or my whole hand) too.
The pope photo is not him pointing upward, he's doing the blessing. Imagine someone standing right in front of him and he's pointing two fingers at their head, then move to torso, then left shoulder, then right shoulder. Depending on the speed of the camera at that time, he might pose like that for a second just to take the photograph as if he's in the middle of the blessing someone. I've never seen priest doing it with one or three or four fingers.
Tldr: they're not pointing upwards, they're pointing to someone's head (the viewer of the painting/photography most likely)
I bet when they used one finger people were asking "me?" and then looked behind them to see if there is someone else. If priest uses two fingers it's obvious he's not pointing at you or someone behind you. It also helps if he points it little bit higher not just right between your eyes like a gun.
From the publication: “The speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is hard to accept.”
This sentence concluded a very short paragraph that apparently aimed to explore whether the hand sign could have a Masonic meaning. But instead of giving any explanation for their conclusion, the authors merely postulate the above without any given reasoning. I’m surprised to find this in what appears to aim to be a scientific analysis. Even more so would it surprise me if any conscious reader found this conclusion satisfactory.
32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of.
However, there were numerous other fraternities and secret societies during that era, although they were typically gender-specific. Seeing both men and women using the same hand signals suggests these were likely common societal practices of the time. And since, presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting.
Having been involved in peer reviewed publishing before, I wonder if this was an afterthought prompted by a peer reviewer's comments on the paper. Perhaps they quickly added this point just to get it to pass review. Sloppy, if so, but I've seen similar (though not as blatant) things happen.
I noticed that too. Eventually they drew the conclusion that people just copied each other to look cool. I have no idea whether there's more to the 'hidden meanings' conjectures or not, but if you're going to dig into a topic, dig in properly. Waste of reading time in my view.
Could also be from some defunct offshoot off the freemasons or some other adjacent secret society. The rosicrucians are perhaps most well known, but secret hermetic societies were fairly in-fashion during the renaissance. Given the secrecy involved, it's probably very hard to know what is and is not (and has been) a significant gesture.
I'd also personally not be surprised if hermetic symbolism cropped up around the Medici-adjacent artists in particular, given the Medicis' proximity to Pico della Mirandola who was fairly important in bringing together this new mix of christian, jewish, gnostic and neoplatonist mysticism.
> hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was, because they were the only other visible area of the body
Huh, I had always assumed the reason that they were featured in renaissance art was the trend of depicting subjects with a sort of realism, combined with hands tending to be a more difficult feature for artists to master; so a good depiction of hands showcases the skill of the artist and enhances the work’s merit as a status symbol for its owner.
I guess both could be true. Hands are an important focus of attraction in the modern day tbf.
I am reminded of a short scene in the film Goya's Ghosts, where the artists claims to charge more if the portrait he is painting includes one or two hands.
Is it really unnatural? Interestingly, as a right-handed, the two middle fingers
of my right hand tend to effortlessly group together; this feels noticeably less true on my left hand, but still observable if I try to relax it.
The peculiar "mission tile" (half-cylindrical) flexibility of the palm region, encouraged by writing for example, may foster this grouping.
It's a bit surprising for the article not to address potential anatomical causes.
The ulnar nerve goes to finger 4 and 5, and the median to 2 and 3 plus a branch to 4. For me, 3+4 is the most difficult combination to maintain, and raising 4 is the most difficult, but the effect (as you suggest) is strongest in the non-dominant hand.
So I interpret this position as simply the most difficult hand position to maintain, thus indicating some intention, practice, or awareness -- and thus self-control, which was considered the master virtue classically.
I naturally keep my pinky and ring fingers together on my right hand, and I think this is a result of how I hold my phone. It made me wonder if there is an easily overlooked common activity of that time that would cause people to naturally hold their middle and ring fingers together.
Your example of writing makes sense too. Perhaps because writers were a more exclusive club then, prominently showing your subject’s hand with that finger grouping was a message in itself.
Yep. If I just naturally lay my hand down on something, my middle and ring fingers do tend to naturally come together.
It takes a tiny bit of intent to splay my fingers out.
Portrait artists constantly study people very closely and are likely attuned to thousands of little nuanced details that go unnoticed by most people. This is probably one.
Now I’m going to start looking at people’s hands to check their finger positions. That might have been a good exercise for the authors of the paper to determine if this is a natural hand position.
I think the claim that it’s an unnatural position definitely needs justifying. A search of a corpus of modern photographs to determine the base rate for hands resting in this pose and a comparison of that to the rate depicted in renaissance art would seem to be the minimal due diligence to determine if there’s even an effect that needs explaining, before delving into the relative likelihood of Masonic symbolism.
As an exercise, pretend you’re a 16th century lord, or just a very theatrical person, and raise your arm with a drooping hand, then gently touch your chest with your fingers splayed and wrist at an angle. Your two fingers in the middle naturally touch first, and stay together once you lay down the whole hand, exactly like in the portraits. It’s not a straining position.
I’m also surprised the paper (?) doesn’t go into simple behavioural explanations for this.
Note that "mudras" have significant meanings in Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism. Mudras used in Indian dances convey feelings or elements of story etc. Also used in yoga. And mudras are not just hand gestures but also facial expressions, eye movements and so on.
Though there does not seem to be any connection of mudras with European paintings. There were cultural links between India and the Greco-Roman world in 2nd-1st century BCE around the time of Indo-Greek kingdom (northwest of the current India) but seems unlikely that would have such an influence centuries later.
The only two plausible explanations to me are either that artists conventionally drew hands like this (for religious, artistic or other reasons) or that artists' subjects conventionally posed like this, for a similar variety of reasons, or because the artist told them to.
The article helpfully rules out a third explanation, an "epidemic of syndactyly", but doesn't make a strong decision between the other two. It seems to lean towards this being a quirk of the artists, but it could do with a quantitative study: if artist A painted subject A like this, what happened when artist A portrayed other subjects, or other artists portrayed A?
i think papers like this reveal the benefits of domain-specific methodologies. a scientific paper is a bad choice for historiography.
art historical texts are usually much more concerned with close reading of artworks to establish syncretic pathways of artistic convention. art writers are usually unconcerned with null hypothesis and burden of proof. the authors here had no real claim about history or any interesting reading of artwork. i couldn't imagine something like this being disseminated in an arts journal or publication-- there just isn't enough time spent with the methods of art history, i.e close readings of the examples presented, primary source inclusion, historiographic narrative, formal analysis, etc.
i wish i could provide a counterexample, but my work is on american conceptual sculpture, not renaissance art. i think the last very good text i read on the renaissance was james hall's book on michelangelo's anatomy published some years ago.
> Finally, there is no letter or religious gesture, Hebrew or otherwise, similar to the splayed hand.
Isn’t there? Not including the thumb, it looks like the letter shin. Of course, the Vulcan salute also famously makes the shin letter (but, includes the thumb).
"During the Renaissance period, hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was, because they were the only other visible area of the body."
[Example painting is a Titian with a naked Mary Magdalene]
I love that there's a section for conflicts of interest.
Would have been interesting to see a disclosure for a pharma company working on syndactyly or a disclosure that the authors belong to some secret society.
> It is an unnatural position of one or both hands in which the third and fourth digits are held tight together, as if almost fused, resembling syndactyly, and the second and fifth fingers are separated from the central ones.
A great deal of hand talking is suprisingly universal | understood quickly enogh on opposite sides of the globe, almost all hunter gatherers have finger talk and share common enough base despite seperate regions.
It's just a matter of style. People copy the styles that they identify themselves with/aspire to. Artist copy each other, black kids copy 50cent, white kids copy jake paul, gay men copy each others feminine affectations. Once you notice it, it's everywhere.
Do you know of research on this? I have two gay friends with feminine speech and both are adamant that they don't choose to have this and would prefer not to. Each has their own theory as to why they have it. One suspects it might be (epi)genetic while another suspects its influenced by being raised by women. I can't buy the latter since many very masculine straight men were raised exclusively by women.
One of my aspirational hobbies is designing Apple Vision Pro games and interfaces that trick people into unwittingly making embarrassing hand gestures in public.
I just wanted to add something I didn't see mentioned in the article or the discussion. In the Christian tradition, figures are often portrayed with their pinky and ring fingers curled up, while the thumb, index, and middle fingers are extended. This is done to symbolize the holy trinity.
The spread fingers make three points on a fibonacci curve. It is just the most aesthetically pleasant gesture. The artists were always in pursuit of beauty and this is what it is.
Of all the hypotheses they considered, they seem to have missed the obvious one: Cosimo I de' Medici is Eastside and Jesus, God and Mary Magdalene are Westside.
“ It should be considered an artistic device or a symbolic hallmark without any conveyed meaning rather than a true pathologic depiction of syndactyly.”
Well, that was tax money well spent. Is this actually considered science now? Is this what (art) historians actually do? Speculate a bit and then say “well, it probably was something”?
I'm surprised the paper doesn't entertain the notion that some things look cool, artists copy one another, and trends simply start like that naturally.
I mean, it's not like Corinthian style columns have a hidden meaning. They look nice and provide artists with a great default.
My thought as well. The article suggests it's an "M" for Medici, but it could just as easily be a W" for "Westside Connection". This sort of proves a theory of mine, that Ice Cube has a time machine.
(Presumably he developed it in order to travel back to the best day of his life, the day he messed around and got a triple double, and then later used it to travel back to the 16th century and influence the late Renaissance... but here I am speculating)
This reminds me of Korea's progressive feminist hand gesture [0].
For some reason, a video about Korea's gender war [1] ended up in my YouTube recommendation and somehow I decided to watch the 47-minute video (and another 110 minutes for part 2)...
Basically, aggressive feminist groups use a hand gesture as a disrespect against men (or misogynists), but the gesture is so general and anti-feminism is so large in Korea, that a lot of people mistook the otherwise normal picture in anime/games as a hidden attack against men. It caused riots and several people lost their jobs or sometimes the entire projects/companies went down.
I think it's not a good idea to associate a very natural gesture with horrible intentions...
If people are attacking women and destroying companies because they think they might be associated with women's rights, it's not a hand gesture that's the problem. "Horrible intentions"?
One of the proposed explanations was that lots of people actually had fingers which naturally posed like that, which, if true, would be of interest to people in biomedicine. The paper was published in Acta Biomedica, an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles, reviews, and case reports in the field of biomedical sciences. It then got slurped into various journal indices and online libraries, including the National Library of Medicine at the NIH.
A division of the NIH (NCBI) maintains a repository of open access publications in life sciences called PubMed Central (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubMed_Central) and this article was in a qualifying journal.
antognini|1 year ago
A few examples:
https://i2.wp.com/catholicism.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/fil...
https://jimmyakin.com/wp-content/uploads/st-augustine-and-fo...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VIII#/media/File%...
It shows up in formal photographs of the Pope in the 20th century:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ch3pBw3dBY0/WeG5Oo9_k1I/AAAAAAAAC...
And the TV series The Young Pope even included this gesture as a detail: https://youngpopesart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
pulkitsh1234|1 year ago
fortran77|1 year ago
At Disney employee training they taught me to point with index and middle finger (or my whole hand) too.
dvh|1 year ago
Tldr: they're not pointing upwards, they're pointing to someone's head (the viewer of the painting/photography most likely)
I bet when they used one finger people were asking "me?" and then looked behind them to see if there is someone else. If priest uses two fingers it's obvious he's not pointing at you or someone behind you. It also helps if he points it little bit higher not just right between your eyes like a gun.
throwawayForMe2|1 year ago
Daub|1 year ago
The text on the floor that she is pointing to reads 'solo Goya' (only Goya) and was not discovered until the painting was cleaned in modern times.
As to it's significance, draw your own conclusions.
massinstall|1 year ago
This sentence concluded a very short paragraph that apparently aimed to explore whether the hand sign could have a Masonic meaning. But instead of giving any explanation for their conclusion, the authors merely postulate the above without any given reasoning. I’m surprised to find this in what appears to aim to be a scientific analysis. Even more so would it surprise me if any conscious reader found this conclusion satisfactory.
Any thoughts?
runjake|1 year ago
However, there were numerous other fraternities and secret societies during that era, although they were typically gender-specific. Seeing both men and women using the same hand signals suggests these were likely common societal practices of the time. And since, presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting.
bgoated01|1 year ago
panarchy|1 year ago
anigbrowl|1 year ago
marginalia_nu|1 year ago
I'd also personally not be surprised if hermetic symbolism cropped up around the Medici-adjacent artists in particular, given the Medicis' proximity to Pico della Mirandola who was fairly important in bringing together this new mix of christian, jewish, gnostic and neoplatonist mysticism.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
odyssey7|1 year ago
Huh, I had always assumed the reason that they were featured in renaissance art was the trend of depicting subjects with a sort of realism, combined with hands tending to be a more difficult feature for artists to master; so a good depiction of hands showcases the skill of the artist and enhances the work’s merit as a status symbol for its owner.
I guess both could be true. Hands are an important focus of attraction in the modern day tbf.
JoeDaDude|1 year ago
mbivert|1 year ago
Is it really unnatural? Interestingly, as a right-handed, the two middle fingers of my right hand tend to effortlessly group together; this feels noticeably less true on my left hand, but still observable if I try to relax it.
The peculiar "mission tile" (half-cylindrical) flexibility of the palm region, encouraged by writing for example, may foster this grouping.
It's a bit surprising for the article not to address potential anatomical causes.
w10-1|1 year ago
So I interpret this position as simply the most difficult hand position to maintain, thus indicating some intention, practice, or awareness -- and thus self-control, which was considered the master virtue classically.
onionisafruit|1 year ago
Your example of writing makes sense too. Perhaps because writers were a more exclusive club then, prominently showing your subject’s hand with that finger grouping was a message in itself.
berniedurfee|1 year ago
It takes a tiny bit of intent to splay my fingers out.
Portrait artists constantly study people very closely and are likely attuned to thousands of little nuanced details that go unnoticed by most people. This is probably one.
Now I’m going to start looking at people’s hands to check their finger positions. That might have been a good exercise for the authors of the paper to determine if this is a natural hand position.
jameshart|1 year ago
ricardobeat|1 year ago
I’m also surprised the paper (?) doesn’t go into simple behavioural explanations for this.
taeric|1 year ago
mordymoop|1 year ago
dim13|1 year ago
bakul|1 year ago
Though there does not seem to be any connection of mudras with European paintings. There were cultural links between India and the Greco-Roman world in 2nd-1st century BCE around the time of Indo-Greek kingdom (northwest of the current India) but seems unlikely that would have such an influence centuries later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudra
Oarch|1 year ago
drtgh|1 year ago
dmurray|1 year ago
The article helpfully rules out a third explanation, an "epidemic of syndactyly", but doesn't make a strong decision between the other two. It seems to lean towards this being a quirk of the artists, but it could do with a quantitative study: if artist A painted subject A like this, what happened when artist A portrayed other subjects, or other artists portrayed A?
JKCalhoun|1 year ago
Fingers spread evenly is artistically uninteresting — naive even. Fingers all joined is also rather dull — suggests a rigidity in fact.
ldjb|1 year ago
https://themmnetwork.com/2010/03/18/the-great-mega-man-finge...
leocgcd|1 year ago
art historical texts are usually much more concerned with close reading of artworks to establish syncretic pathways of artistic convention. art writers are usually unconcerned with null hypothesis and burden of proof. the authors here had no real claim about history or any interesting reading of artwork. i couldn't imagine something like this being disseminated in an arts journal or publication-- there just isn't enough time spent with the methods of art history, i.e close readings of the examples presented, primary source inclusion, historiographic narrative, formal analysis, etc.
i wish i could provide a counterexample, but my work is on american conceptual sculpture, not renaissance art. i think the last very good text i read on the renaissance was james hall's book on michelangelo's anatomy published some years ago.
shrx|1 year ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait#Interpretat...
ffhhj|1 year ago
https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/82e1c6954dc87273a...
082349872349872|1 year ago
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lngmx0v3aOs&t=25s
irrational|1 year ago
Isn’t there? Not including the thumb, it looks like the letter shin. Of course, the Vulcan salute also famously makes the shin letter (but, includes the thumb).
AdamN|1 year ago
[Example painting is a Titian with a naked Mary Magdalene]
criddell|1 year ago
Would have been interesting to see a disclosure for a pharma company working on syndactyly or a disclosure that the authors belong to some secret society.
walterbell|1 year ago
Lammy|1 year ago
My favorite example is in the Flammarion engraving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving
betandr|1 year ago
defrost|1 year ago
eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuhhn-GSejs
tocs3|1 year ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly
I thought maybe it was some sort of condition that caused finger to contract like that.
lkdfjlkdfjlg|1 year ago
guerrilla|1 year ago
Do you know of research on this? I have two gay friends with feminine speech and both are adamant that they don't choose to have this and would prefer not to. Each has their own theory as to why they have it. One suspects it might be (epi)genetic while another suspects its influenced by being raised by women. I can't buy the latter since many very masculine straight men were raised exclusively by women.
DonHopkins|1 year ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGnqf3CUW8
scifi|1 year ago
082349872349872|1 year ago
leading to a local joke:
Q. How can you spot a forester on a Saturday night?
A. (while making sign above) 5 beers, please!
rebuilder|1 year ago
Also common advice for artists is to group the middle and ring fingers together. It just looks better and they kind of tend to do so naturally anyway.
pyuser583|1 year ago
But simple articles like this add to knowledge in a fun way. I hope this becomes more common with more open journals.
Not sure if Acta Biomed is open.
motohagiography|1 year ago
koolala|1 year ago
antman|1 year ago
greenhearth|1 year ago
every|1 year ago
_tk_|1 year ago
wmanley|1 year ago
ggaughan|1 year ago
moi2388|1 year ago
Well, that was tax money well spent. Is this actually considered science now? Is this what (art) historians actually do? Speculate a bit and then say “well, it probably was something”?
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
mandibeet|1 year ago
mihaic|1 year ago
I mean, it's not like Corinthian style columns have a hidden meaning. They look nice and provide artists with a great default.
legitster|1 year ago
But for real, this seems like selection bias. Is combination of fingers touching actually any more or less common than any others?
ruined|1 year ago
karaterobot|1 year ago
(Presumably he developed it in order to travel back to the best day of his life, the day he messed around and got a triple double, and then later used it to travel back to the 16th century and influence the late Renaissance... but here I am speculating)
baldr333|1 year ago
SamBam|1 year ago
imglorp|1 year ago
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Hitler+portrait+by+Heinrich+Knirr&...
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
riskable|1 year ago
[deleted]
hamasho|1 year ago
Basically, aggressive feminist groups use a hand gesture as a disrespect against men (or misogynists), but the gesture is so general and anti-feminism is so large in Korea, that a lot of people mistook the otherwise normal picture in anime/games as a hidden attack against men. It caused riots and several people lost their jobs or sometimes the entire projects/companies went down.
I think it's not a good idea to associate a very natural gesture with horrible intentions...
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/02/business/south-korea-busi... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74
flir|1 year ago
I imagine it's a very good idea, if you have horrible intentions.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ok-sign-wh...
pessimizer|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
Dr_Birdbrain|1 year ago
troymc|1 year ago
lgessler|1 year ago
zoomablemind|1 year ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
cannibalXxx|1 year ago
[deleted]
mvkel|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]