Much to my dismay and surprise, I’m not bright. (I thought that if he had a defect, it would cause him to paint everyone tall and thin and not only “some, particularly the holy ones.”) However, since I accept the explanation and understand its nonsensicality, I can at least say that I’m not dull.
There is a straightfoward philosophical objection anyway: most every artist historically has deliberately distorted images and figures in a stylized fashion. In fact, the Renaissance artists were unusual for attempting and inventing truly lifelike methods of painting people.
The only way the “defect of vision” explanation works is if the artist’s vision had been corrected prior to him starting to paint, so that his view of the canvas remained undistorted, but his memory of what people look like remained distorted. If someone entered the room and said, “Whatcha doin’ El Greco?” He would have reeled back in awe of how unusually short, stocky, and fat they were.
I would guess that tall, elongated, and thin were the “ideal” in the artist’s mind, therefore the exaggeration of those features among the portrayal of such figures.
I was right but sort of for the wrong reason.
Don’t know if we’re still spoiling, but I just guessed that it was probably an artistic interpretation first and foremost - the whole aspect ratio that would have occurred if El Greco did have a sight defect didn’t occur to me, so I guess I’m only partially Medawar brilliant.
Anyone have other cute tests like this to share? (got this one by the way–yea!)
Macropsia & Micropsia, or more generally Alice in Wonderland syndrome:
These are perceptual defects of vision, not physical. It doesn’t have to affect paintings in the same way as it affects tangible objects. So, the “obviously wrong” explanation may be right after all. It’s the other reasoning that leads into fallacy and dullness.
Really bright bulbs don’t let their thinking be narrowed down by the question, and keep looking for the whole picture.
I recognized the fallacy instantly.
Instant here also.
Got it right away, but it doesn’t work for all optical distortions. Take nearsightedness, for instance. Far objects are blurry. Near are in crisp focus. Since my easel is near (and within my focus plane), I can actually paint what I see. Now, if there is some kind of lens distortion that, say, makes things far away seem elongated, but nearby is properly projected, maybe the situation in the OP is possible.
I’m guessing that if his vision is distorted then the paper on which he draws is also distorted in his eyes, thus cancelling out the effect. If he were to actually draw people tall and thin on the paper, to him they would look even taller and thinner. No matter what is visual defect (if any), the fact that his medium exists in the same world as the things he draws, will always cancel out any uniform distortion. So that must not be the reason.
But then I always find ‘intelligence tests’ when I am dead tired.
I got it instantly, but it seemed so obvious I read and reread the question, then looked at the spoilers.
I don’t get why this is an ‘intelligence’ test.
Why would someone who only sees blue only paint in blue?
Whoa that makes me feel better. I googled it after my post, and I’m pretty much on the money. (I actually think my answer is even better than the one on google because a person with a defect wouldn’t even accidentally draw distorted people because they’re already seeing distorted paper. There would be no ‘realizing of the error’)
It’s not that simple. As I pointed out in my post, there is the possibility that there is an optical distortion that differs based on the viewer’s distance to the object. Nearsightedness is an example. Now, I don’t know if there is an optical distortion that would, say, make circles perfect for objects near the observer and oblong for distant objects (I don’t think there is), but it’s not a possibility that can be ruled out based on the facts of the statement alone. One would need some familiarity with optics to make a definitive conclusion. I think that subtlety is being overlooked here.
Subtlety that would lead one to the wrong answer? 
No. You wouldn’t get to the wrong answer – the “working thesis,” if you will, is the logical conclusion that many have come to in this thread-- but you would make sure to eliminate possibilities that are not immediately obvious. I am not 100% certain that there is not an optical defect that could exaggerate the projection depending on the distance of that object to the lens and focusing plane. There are also lens distortions (barrel distortion and pincushion distortion) that are based on how far off-axis subjects, so circles will appear circular in the center of the optical axis, but oval the farther one gets away from the center of the axis. So, if one were painting a scene with you easel in front of you, taking up the center 20% of your vision, while trying to paint a scene taking up 80% of your vision (assuming the optical axis is centered), you will be painting distortions onto your canvas, as objects farther away from the optical axis will be more distorted. (But this type of distortion is pretty recognizable and not at all reminiscent of El Greco’s distortions.)
Now, it’s absolutely clear to me that El Greco’s distortions were deliberate and not based on any sort of physical abnormality. His distortions occur on different axes, many of his sketched drawings show normal proportions, etc. I just have a minor objection to the logic in the OP in getting to that conclusion. As has been demonstrated, that logic would fail when we apply it to another type of optical distortion: near-sightedness. My instinct would be to intuit that the type of distortion could not be explained satisfyingly by optics, but I would still research optical aberrations further to confidently eliminate that possibility. It so happens that in this particular logic puzzle, there doesn’t seem to be any way in optics to create a distortion that is based on distance-to-subject that would explain elongation of distant figures along a vertical axis, but little-to-no aberration to nearby figures (like, say, an artist’s easel.)