I was at the National Portrait Gallery in London last week and saw a 17th-century portrait of a famous man who happened to be blind. He wore a black band around his head, just above his brow, and about two centimetres wide. I presume that this was to indicate to people in public that he was blind, the same way that dark sunglasses and a cane are used today. It got me thinking, was this black forehead band the standard sign of blindness back then? If so, how far back does it go? Were there previous or subsequent signs (besides the sunglasses and cane) that achieved widespread use in Britain or any other part of the world? How did blind people identify themselves in, say, Medieval times, or in Ancient Rome, or in Imperial China?
See, there you go presuming. People can tell he’s blind from how he bumps into things. He wears the black headband 'coz he’s a ninja.
And your not presuming hes a ninja?
You never can see a ninja till its too late!!
No…he wears the headband to cover the bruises he got from bumping into stuff. 
In 17th century, ninja doesn’t see YOU!
Maybe the band did function like dark glasses, but he just moved it away from his eyes for the portrait?
No matter how many times I hear those jokes they always crack me up, now everyone in the computer lab thinks i’m crazy :smack:
As for the OP I would imagine that some form of cane was used by blind people for as far back as history records simply because it is common sense to use something to test unknown areas, the same way people with sight will proceed through darkness with their arms outstretched moving them from side to side. The cane or stick may not have been white until more recently but any stick or cane being used in this way would have indicated to any right-minded individual that the person was blind.
The painting the OP is referring to is presumably Nathaniel Hone’s 1762 portrait of Sir John Fielding.
Whether this was ever common is more difficult to judge. I can’t think of another example in any other portrait, but then other painters might have been playing down evidence of blindness and so omitted them. Hone’s portrait is unusual because he was deliberately emphasing that Fielding was blind.
What one can say however is that such bands were not part of the usual iconography of blindness used in other types of paintings, such as those of Jesus healing the blind man. In fact, what is striking is that Western artists never really developed any standard visual clues to indicate blindness beyond the obvious ones of sticks and blank stares. That does rather suggest that the blind didn’t use such visual clues in real life either.
Yep, that’s the one. Apparently I misremembered the century.
I thought I’d bump this thread to see if anyone in the last twelve years has been able to discover whether the black headband was ever a conventional signal for blindness, or whether it was idiosyncratic to John Fielding.
Apparently I’m not the only one who has been wondering about this.
It’s more likely it was covering up some sort of scar or injury. Swedish general Georg Carl von Döbeln wore a very similar headband after being hit in the forehead by a musket ball.
I like these questions that lead me down a rabbit hole that I never knew existed. But if anyone knows the answer to this, it isn’t readily googleable. This site says that it “appears to be purely symbolic and is found in some other images of the blind in the late 18th century,” but doesn’t link to any of those other paintings. Other sites say that he was described as really wearing it (and using a switch instead of a cane) but the contemporary description doesn’t seem to distinguish if this was something blind people did or a quirk of the one guy.
In literary sources, at least from somewhat later, the “bandage/fillet covering the eyes” thing appears to be absolutely routine as a description of blindness.
The Blind Man and His Guide, 1844:
My guess would be that Fielding either wore a bandage actually covering his eyes, and pushed it up to be less concealing for the portraits, or else didn’t habitually wear it and it was the painter’s idea. The article “Painting for the blind: Nathaniel Hone’s portraits of Sir John Fielding” apparently discusses it in more detail:
In any case, I seriously doubt that any blind people of the period habitually wore any kind of band or cover resting above their eyes, i.e., on their forehead.
nm
Different country but sometimes these things were widespread; I’ve checked my copy of Lazarillo (1554, Spain) and the blind man isn’t described as wearing a band; in fact there is a description where it indicates that he made part of his income by being paid to pray for others, and one of his virtues in this was that he “looked humble and devout when he prayed, without making great showy gestures with eyes nor mouth, as others do”:
A band would have spoiled the look.
Now I’m wondering about the “blind justice” paintings/statues–could the blindfold have been more than purely symbolic?
No idea of the answer, just looking in to say that the National Portrait Gallery is one of my favourite art museums ever!
Last time I went, it was like meeting a lot of old friends.
Interesting old thread. Never heard of Fielding before, only recall his brother as the author of Tom Jones.
It seems like a weird symbol of blindness. It does look like that band might normally cover his eyes and was raised for his portrait, but then why would the painter include it then? Or why was it not removed altogether?
Perhaps it was a band he used to cover his eyes but would raise it like that to address people face to face, or perhaps an audience, and the artist was showing him as he had often been seen by others with the band around his forehead.
One notes that Fielding was blinded in an accident. Accident damage may well leave significant visible damage that some may wish to cover. Or indeed scarring and wounds that really need covering for general protection. So some blind people would have found need for a cover no matter what.
Given he was a magistrate, perhaps the painting was building a narrative of a blind man delivering justice. That certainly would tie into the common portrayal of blindfolded justice.
The blindfold signifies that justice is willfully blind: it’s not that she can’t see the differences in social class, connections people have, etc. It’s that she chooses not to take them into account.