Pictorial balance has been used to explain why some paintings evoke feelings of unity and harmony. This study shows how it is calculated and proposes an evolutionary reason for its existence. The concept of pictorial balance as a center of mass effect, i.e. the feeling that somehow a person on the left seems to be balanced by a tree on the right, originated at the beginning of the 20th century. It had never been mentioned in art commentary of the previous 500 years, and yet has become a widely assumed but unsubstantiated explanation of why some paintings evoke feelings of unity and harmony. Despite the lack of historical documentation, the perception of pictorial balance exists. This study shows how the low-level visual system calculates balance, how it evokes feelings of unity and harmony, and its evolutionary importance in visualizing the world of moving organisms. It is done by means of a study of an elusive pictorial effect known to painters, in which these feelings are evoked. In such pictures the image seems to be perceived as a whole without the need to fixate on individual depicted objects. The effect was first described by a 17th century critic Roger de Piles and subsequently by a few renowned artists. The author hypothesized that this response was due to the painting being in a state of perfect balance. Computer modeling found that such a picture must have bilateral luminance symmetry with a lighter lower half by ~1.07. A study was conducted in which the identical picture seen sequentially in slightly different frames could seem different to observers because of the change in balance created by the frames. The results indicate that the extent to which the pairs were seen as different correlated with two methods of calculating balance. One of them could be understood as a possible primitive visual operating system for identifying other moving organisms as ever-changing vectors of balance. The more balanced the painting, the more it will be seen as a whole object by emphasizing peripheral vision and decreasing the tendency to fixate on what is in the picture, causing the painting to be perceived as unified and harmonious. It is proposed that in the evolution of vision there is a luminance pathway that was later superseded by other pathways using color vision. This explains the percept of balance and other visual phenomena.

中文翻译：

---

图像平衡是一种自下而上的神经美学属性，调节注意力和眼球运动。原始视觉操作系统的模型解释了平衡特性和图片的一些视觉特性


绘画平衡被用来解释为什么有些画作能唤起团结与和谐的感觉。这项研究展示了它是如何计算的，并提出了它存在的进化原因。绘画平衡的概念作为质量中心效应，即感觉左边的人似乎被右边的树平衡了，起源于20世纪初。过去500年的艺术评论中从未提及过这一点，但它已成为一种广泛假设但未经证实的解释，解释了为什么有些画作会唤起团结与和谐的感觉。尽管缺乏历史文献，但图像平衡的观念仍然存在。这项研究展示了低级视觉系统如何计算平衡，如何唤起团结与和谐的感觉，以及它在可视化移动生物体世界中的进化重要性。它是通过研究画家已知的难以捉摸的图像效果来完成的，在这种效果中，这些感觉被唤起。在这样的图片中，图像似乎被视为一个整体，而不需要关注单独的描绘对象。这种效果首先由 17 世纪评论家罗杰·德·皮尔斯 (Roger de Piles) 描述，随后一些著名艺术家也描述了这种效果。作者推测这种反应是由于绘画处于完美的平衡状态。计算机建模发现，这样的图片必须具有双边亮度对称性，下半部分较亮约 1.07。进行了一项研究，在稍微不同的框架中连续看到的相同图片对于观察者来说可能会有所不同，因为框架产生的平衡变化。结果表明，配对被视为不同的程度与两种计算平衡的方法相关。 其中之一可以被理解为一种可能的原始视觉操作系统，用于将其他移动的有机体识别为不断变化的平衡向量。绘画越平衡，就越能通过强调余光视觉并减少对画面中事物的关注来将其视为一个整体对象，从而使绘画被视为统一和谐。有人提出，在视觉进化中存在一条亮度途径，后来被其他使用色觉的途径所取代。这解释了平衡感和其他视觉现象。