The role of the righ hemisphere in the building of our visual space is now well established. The purpose of the present research was to determine the proportion of left handed painters, and to identify famous painters which were left-handed. The methods were as follows. First, the study of the portraits of the painters; but self-portraits were worthless (right-handed painters often painting themself as observed in the mirror, i.e. left-handed). Therefore, only portraits of painters made by another painter or by photography were used. Secondly, the orientation of the hatchings used by the artist for the representation of the shadows in the drawing: the right-handed artist making hatchings descending from right to left, and the left-handed artist making hatchings descending from left to right. Thirdly, the study of the relevant literature about history of art. The study population included 500 painters divided in two groups: a population of 127 painters studied by portraits and hatchings; and a population of 373 painters studied only by hatchings. In the first population, the proportion of left-handed painters was 4,7%. In the second population, the proportion of left-handed painters was 2,1%. Among the 500 painters they were 14 left-handed subjects, i.e. 2,8%. These 14 painters were, in alphabetical order: Cambiaso, Dufy, Escher, Fussli, Grandville, Holbein, Klee, De La Patelliere, Leonard de Vinci, menzel, Montelupo, papety, Regnault, Van Goyen. Conversly, some painters often quoted as left-handed were, in matter of fact, right-handed according to the criterions of this study; these 7 painters were: Durer, Landseer, Lenbach, Raphael, Michel-Angelo, Picasso, Sebastiano del Piombo. The incidence of 2.8% of the left-handed painters was far below the proportion of 8% of the general population. This was in contradiction with the usually received idea of the great frequency of the left-handedness of the painters in the history of art.
