Dangerous Art

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

“The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.”
- Stendhal

A peculiar syndrome related to the viewing of art has been documented as far back as 1817 and was officially given the name Stendhal Syndrome in 1979. Although the condition does not yet appear in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it has been taken seriously enough to be studied by a research team in Italy who systematically measured reactions of viewers to the artworks inside the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.

The disorder was named after French author Henri-Marie Beyle (1783-1842), also known as ‘Stendhal’. After visiting Florence in 1817, Stendhal wrote about his intense reaction to the artwork he had viewed: “As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart…