Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.337.

The allegorical representation of the five senses as female figures dates back to the 16th  century – the collaborative cycle of paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens being the best known. Sight was considered the most important of the senses from the time of Aristotle, a view that artists, naturally,  perpetuated, for which reason themes such The Healing of the Blind Man, and other secular and religious narratives, in which sight plays a central role are common subjects.