Abstract
MAY a portrait painter be allowed to remark that there are two kinds of green eyes, and the poets have duly appreciated both. The eye of the “green-eyed monster” is, no doubt, the cold grey, or stony blue eye, overspread with the yellow of biliousness, hence green; but when Dante called the eyes of the beatified Beatrice emeralds he did not mean to insult her. The image called up by his ecstatic words is that of those deep, soft eyes which are a warm brown in some lights—for instance with the light falling on them from one side only—and take a grey tint when facing the light of the sky, and green tints at other times, according to the lights that fall upon them; and are there fore sometimes a puzzle to portrait painters. Eyes, like the sea and precious stones, catch lights and transmute them. The sea is only green from the meeting of sunlight and blue sky light in it.
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H, J. Concerning the Colour of Eyes. Nature 19, 340 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/019340a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/019340a0
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