Necessity of StretchingAn Analysis of the Proportional Shape of the Figure in European Realistic Painting

European classical and realistic classical paintings have numerous examples of elongated figures, some of which had even become the signature style of the target artists. After the collection, measurement, and comparison of the images of the main related work, it was found that there were subtle but clear differences in the stretching position, shape, and ratio. By categorizing the target work and retracing the surrounding history or manually restoring them, several internal factors of creation, such as the influence of details, the habit of “beauty”, the forced of tension and the need for narrative was uncovered and rationalized. Therefore, as an extremely small and most neglected patch in art historical research, the phenomenon of proportional elongation that involves a wide range of aspects, need be studied and analyzed to open up a mode of operation for interpreting work, thus leading to a new upgrade of art cognition.