The nuances of children’s gaze

Children can interpret and have complex experiences of paintings. They can grasp the deep meaning of images and often establish a link between iconography and such issues as war, death, fiction and ethics, as this study on children’s visualization of the Isenheim altarpiece shows. The spontaneity of children’s gaze and the constant creation of meaning makes their aesthetic experience an example of imaginative freedom that differs from the classical and “adult” way of looking at the same paintings, more inclined to ascribing perceived information into established codes.