zlacker

>>Jaruze+(OP)
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?

>>dmurra+DA
Yeah, to me it is an artistic thing (then followed perhaps by painters copying "the Masters").

Fingers spread evenly is artistically uninteresting — naive even. Fingers all joined is also rather dull — suggests a rigidity in fact.