Evolution of Neuroaesthetic Variables in Portrait Paintings throughout the Renaissance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and well-written paper, which I believe will be useful to the community interested in these matters. I would suggest, if possible, that the authors moved some of the details to annexes or to supplementary materials. That would make the paper much easier to read, avoiding distracting the reader with details that, although important, are not what most of us are interested in during a first passage.

Author Response

Reviewer Feedback for “Evolution of Neuroaesthetic Variables in Portrait Paintings Throughout the Renaissance”

Dear Reviewer 1,

We would like to thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript and provide your valuable feedback. We found your comments to be very helpful and believe they improved the overall quality of the paper. Please see your comments and our responses to them below. The changes are made in the updated manuscript attached.

Comment # 1

This is an interesting and well-written paper, which I believe will be useful to the community interested in these matters. I would suggest, if possible, that the authors moved some of the details to annexes or to supplementary materials. That would make the paper much easier to read, avoiding distracting the reader with details that, although important, are not what most of us are interested in during a first passage.

Response # 1

We have considered your suggestion and made the following changes. In order to reduce the amount of details and equations that may not be necessary for a cursory read, we have simplified all of section 2.6 so that the equations for symmetry, balance, and complexity are now referenced to another paper. We have simplified these sections to provide brief intuitive descriptions instead. So far, the only sections with equations and thorough details pertain to the statistical analyses (2.4) and chiaroscurro indices (2.5). We feel that a detailed description of both of these sections is necessary as they are unique to this paper. Our hope is that a less detail inclined reader will be able to skim over the ‘intuitive’ sections of each measure and not be bogged down by the details.  We also hope that removing the equations in 2.6 makes the paper a little easier to read.

Reviewer 2 Report

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