Blurry as tremor
Citation Manager Formats
Make Comment
See Comments

The late Renaissance Dutch painter Frans Hals (1582–1666) was a master of revealing his subjects' peculiarities. However, in the Regentesses (figure), he shows a neurologic condition—the blurred shoulder margin of the woman in the middle suggests trembling in a standing figure.1
Courtesy of Frans Hals Museum, oil on canvas, Haarlem. Photograph: Margareta Svensson. For the painter to have seen the shoulders at 2 levels steadily, the frequency of oscillation should have been about human flicker fusion threshold (16 Hz), characteristic of orthostatic tremor.
Is it possible that Hals, who once amazed Van Gogh2 by his 27 “blacks,” borrowed a technique from double exposure photography1 centuries in advance to depict a fairly common (e.g., parkinsonian or essential) tremor? Or the alternative: he painted what he saw—very fast trembling, producing illusion of double shoulders—perhaps the earliest depiction of orthostatic tremor.
Footnotes
Study funding: No targeted funding reported.
Disclosure: The author reports no disclosures relevant to the manuscript. Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures.
- © 2013 American Academy of Neurology
Disputes & Debates: Rapid online correspondence
- Led by ... Hals!
- Sayyed A. Sohrab, Assistant Professor of Neurology, University of Michiganssohrab@med.umich.edu
Submitted September 26, 2013 - Misled by Frans Hals
- Peter J Koehler, neurologist, Atrium Medical Centre, Heerlen, Netherlandspkoehler@neurohistory.nl
- Antoon Erftemeijer, Haarlem, Netherlands
Submitted September 11, 2013
REQUIREMENTS
If you are uploading a letter concerning an article:
You must have updated your disclosures within six months: http://submit.neurology.org
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.