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Wonder, Horror and Public Spectacle in a Suspenseful Painting
Human responses in a high-contrast masterpiece
The first detail that might catch your attention in this candle-lit painting is the expressive posture of the man in the centre, dressed in a rich crimson robe. He is a scientist — or “natural philosopher” as he would have been called at the time.
With locks of feral grey hair falling over his shoulders in the mode of Isaac Newton, he is about to perform a merciless experiment.
His appearance is moderately confrontational: eyebrows raised, lips slightly pursed, and his head turned fractionally to the side so the light sweeps across one cheek and casts the shadow of his nose across the other.
It is a gaze poised between invitation and challenge, an expression that’s designed to test whoever is looking on.
This painting, titled An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, made by the British artist Joseph Wright, depicts a demonstration of a vacuum on a living bird.
What the artist brilliantly achieves is a kind of theatre with a moral question at its heart: Will you look…
