Claude Monet, the father of impressionism, spent years studying the effects of light and color, then recreating those effects, rather than the objects, in his art. At about age 65, Monet noticed a change in his perception of color. Colors appeared less intense, and he began to replace whites, blues and greens with yellows and purples. These two paintings show the change in detail and palette. At age 72, Monet was diagnosed with bilateral cataracts. Terrified of the results of surgery, he did not consent to an operation on the first eye until ten years later.

Leonardo da Vinci made tremendous contributions, not only to art and science, but to optics as well. He foretold the invention of contact lenses when he had a visually impaired man open his eyes in a bowl of water and the man’s vision improved. Da Vinci also aggressively studied the nature of light and anatomy. According to Historian of Art, Martin Kemp, “He planned to make a glass model of the eye to confirm how it functioned. If he understood how optics worked in the external word, and how the eye functioned, he should be able to make paintings that looked like a ‘second nature.’ This means that naturalism is not the taking a kind of ‘photograph’ of nature but reconstructing and demonstrating how nature works.”

It’s not all chocolate and flowers. There’s a vision connection to the man for whom Valentine’s Day is named. Writings about St. Valentine of Rome give accounts of two instances in which he restored sight to the blind. The first was the daughter of a judge who had arrested Valentine. The second was the daughter of his jailer, just before Valentine’s execution. Is it coincidence, then, that February is Low Vision Awareness Month?