The long view

SIR – In his piece on The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (Arts, August 8), Charles Saatchi mentions the “strangely elongated figures” in El Greco’s paintings and the rumours that these may have been due to his suffering from a form of astigmatism.

This seems unlikely. If El Greco saw people as elongated he would paint them with normal proportions to see them elongated on his canvas, as the canvas itself would appear elongated.

This is the usual refutation of what has become known as the El Greco Fallacy, and appears to be backed up by experiments on visual perception.

Bristol