Caught on canvas: Facial expressions in art

We tested whether facial expressions in artworks can be reliably classified using six basic emotion categories. Participants viewed 116 cropped portraits, selecting the best-fitting emotion for each. Results show that about half of the images elicited consistent responses, aligning with basic emotional prototypes. The rest produced distributed judgments, indicating Multifaceted Emotions – layered or uncertain affective signals. The findings support the hypothesis that artists are capable of portraying both basic and complex emotional states, opening up the possibility for a new artwork-based emotion database to study nuanced emotional perception.