Saint John the Baptist, ca. 1600–1605, an example of El Greco's elongated style.
The El Greco fallacy is typically a perceptive fallacy, where it is assumed that particular perceptual abnormalities will influence interactions with the world of a similar nature. It is named after an erroneous explanation for the vertically distorted painting style of El Greco, which held that the artist must have seen the world as distorted by a peculiar astigmatism, and thus painted this distorted world. This theoretical astigmatism cannot explain El Greco's style though, as he would have seen his canvases distorted in the same way, and painting onto them would have cancelled out any distortion.
It is believed the term originated with Irvin Rock, in his 1966 book, The Nature of Perceptual Adaptation.[1][2]
When explored in experiment — by having subjects wear distorting lenses — it seems likely that El Greco would have completely adapted to seeing a distorted world, and this could not have been an explanation.[3]
^Firestone, Chaz (2013). "On the origin and status of the 'El Greco fallacy'". Perception. 42 (6): 672–674. doi:10.1068/p7488. ISSN 1468-4233. PMID 24422249. S2CID 46387563.
^Rock, Irvin (1966). The Nature of Perceptual Adaptation. Oxford: Basic Books.
^Anstis, Stuart M. (2002). "Was El Greco Astigmatic?". Leonardo. 35 (2): 208. doi:10.1162/00240940252940612. ISSN 1530-9282. S2CID 57572184.
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